


One Fine Holiday

by waddled



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mortal, Christmas, Don't smoke kids, F/M, Fake Dating, Holidays, Idiots to friends to lovers, Mostly Fluff, Mutual Pining, New Year's Eve, Slow Burn, Smoking, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, With A Twist, did i mention they're idiots?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 76,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27722731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waddled/pseuds/waddled
Summary: Percy wants to make his dad mad. Jason wants to get through the holidays without his mom trying to set him up. With best friends like theirs, they should know they’re about to bite off more than they can chew.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Jason Grace/Piper McLean
Comments: 93
Kudos: 259





	1. Thanksgiving

“I need you to do me a favor,” Percy said as soon as he sat down, wearing the honeyed smile he saved just for getting his best friend to do something she definitely would not want to do for him.

She blinked at him twice. “No.”

“You haven’t even heard what it is yet,” he replied, smile unfading. 

The cafe where they had lunch together every Tuesday bustled with activity, more patrons than usual coming in off the street to escape the mid November snow flurries that had started while Percy made his way there. If she hadn’t gotten there early, they probably would have had to wait for a table. Waiting would have been bad for Percy – he had an hour for lunch before he had to be back at school, just enough time to enjoy a meal with his favorite girl and make it back before the bell rang.

“Last time you asked me for a favor I ended up in Maine with a girl I’d known for all of twelve hours,” she said, leaning back in her seat and crossing her legs. “Your favors are _dangerous_.”

At that, Percy’s smile turned into a frown. “You said you had fun.”

“I did have fun,” she conceded with a shrug. “And I dated that girl for close to six months after. That’s not the point.”

“Just listen to the pitch before you shoot me down,” he pressed, banking on the fact that she knew he was not above actual begging right there in the middle of the cafe.

Before she could reply, they were interrupted by their waitress. Since they frequented that cafe religiously, the waitress didn’t need to ask their orders, but came by to deliver glasses of water and say hello. A few polite comments about the freak snowstorm later, and they were alone again, Percy turning to his best friend and giving his most winning smile a second attempt.

“Fine,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Give me the pitch and then I’ll decide.”

Riding that wave of victory, Percy decided to jump right to it, no vamping. “So, Thanksgiving is ne–”

“ _No_ ,” she said again, not allowing him to finish his sentence.

“You can’t tell me to give you the pitch and then not let me finish the pitch,” he objected with slumped shoulders and a shameless pout. Percy had known she would be a hard sell, which had been why he waited until the week before the holiday to ask her. The more dire his situation appeared – having no date for Thanksgiving when it loomed so close around the corner – the more likely she was to agree, just to save his sorry ass from embarrassment. She had always been great that way.

“I know where it’s going,” she replied, shaking her head. “Percy, I love you. I love your mom, too, but the rest of your family are shitheads. And your dad hates me even more than I hate him. I’d rather sit in my apartment eating a gross microwave dinner than spend ten seconds with those fuckers.”

Percy groaned, his head rolling back in frustration. “That’s why I need you there. If you’re my date, Dad won’t even have time to complain about the many life decisions I’ve made that he doesn’t approve of. He’ll just be complaining about you.”

“ _That’s_ your pitch?” she asked, the smallest of smiles playing on her lips for the first time since he’d sat down at the table. “You’re bringing me for the actual purpose of tricking your dad into complaining about me?”

“If you ask me, it’s absolutely genius,” he said, trying to smother his own hope at the way her eyes sparkled with excitement and mischief.

He knew that sparkle well. The same one had been in her eye the first day of fourth grade when they’d met at recess chasing frogs and he’d suggested they put one down the pants of a bully named Nancy Bobofit. It had been there, on the evening of their first middle school dance, when he’d dared her to try climbing the basketball hoop in her stupid, fluffy dress. She’d had that sparkle in her eye the summer before his freshman year of high school when he’d stolen his dad’s Mustang and showed up at her front door for a joy ride. That very sparkle had been in her eye the day he’d suggested they skip his graduation to go to the beach and get high. Percy loved that sparkle.

“What do I get out of it?” she asked, eyes narrowed, trying and failing to pretend she wasn’t obviously already on board with his scheme.

“As much turkey as you can eat and the joy of smart mouthing my dad to your heart’s content,” he replied, leaning forward on his arms and smiling at her again – a different smile than the one he’d worn when he walked in. This was the conspiratorial, lopsided grin that had always paired so well with her sparkling eyes.

“Percy,” she said flatly, “I’ve been a vegetarian since we were twelve, you’re not getting me with turkey.”

Turkey didn’t matter. Percy knew he had Piper without it.

  


* * *

  


“Jason, it’s a terrible idea,” Annabeth objected just as soon as he had made the suggestion. “Our parents have been trying to get us together since the minute your mom got pregnant. Since you were a _fetus_ , Jason, and that’s not a joke. I’ve seen the pictures of me as a baby up against your mom’s belly. If we show up to Thanksgiving and tell them we’re dating, they’re going to start planning the wedding.”

“That’s exactly why it’s such a great idea,” Jason insisted, unable to help the way his smile grew a little wider at the judgmental slope of her brow. “We pretend to date through New Years and, when we break up, they won’t be able to say anything about us getting together again.”

Annabeth leaned back in her chair and dropped her pencil on the sketchpad she’d been pouring over before he walked into her office. “Why now?”

Averting his eyes, Jason tried to think of a reason, any reason beyond the embarrassing truth, that Annabeth might believe. He had two problems – Annabeth was the smartest person he’d ever known, and Jason couldn’t tell a convincing lie if his life depended on it. Annabeth had seen him in plenty more embarrassing situations over the years, though, so he decided to bite the bullet and be pitifully honest.

“This year Dad is having the whole family over for all the holidays to make a big show of it,” he explained, shoulders slumped and body sinking into his chair across from Annabeth’s desk. “His team is gearing up for a presidential run, so now they’re playing up the dependable family man image. That means _all_ the cousins. Annabeth, I’m the only one not bringing a date. Of _all_ the cousins.”

Nose wrinkling, Annabeth pondered his predicament for several seconds. “How many of you are there again?”

Despite the fact that Annabeth had practically grown up alongside Jason, her question made sense. His father had two brothers and a sister, but the four of them had fallen out before Jason had even been born over disputes about their inheritance. Only in recent years had the siblings begrudgingly mended fences, mostly because Jason’s father wanted to be able to present a unified familial front in his New York state gubernatorial run. By then Jason and Annabeth had been away at college. He’d met his uncles’ and aunt’s kids a few times, but Annabeth had only heard about them second hand.

“Nine of us, including Thalia and me,” he answered, sighing out his nose after.

“Oh my god, you’re such a dramatic little bitch,” Annabeth replied, rolling her eyes. It would have been a very inappropriate thing to say between colleagues at work, but they were behind the privacy of a closed door and the others at the firm had long stopped caring what Annabeth and Jason said to each other so long as it wasn’t in front of clients. “I would maybe give it to you if it was two digits, but nine is not a big number. There are six of us on my dad’s side and he only has two siblings.”

“It’s a big number when I’m the _only one_ without a date,” Jason said, sinking further into his chair. “The second youngest is engaged, too, so that’s just going to make it all worse.”

He could already hear his parents making comments about how old he was getting, how he was successful, with a stable job at a good architectural firm and should be thinking about settling down. Thalia didn’t want kids, so they were depending on him for grandchildren, as if grandchildren were something they were owed by at least one of their kids. Jason’s mom always had a long list of available young women she’d be very happy to fix him up with and he had no doubt he would be hearing about every single one of them over the course of dinner if he showed up alone.

It wasn’t that Jason didn’t think or care about those things himself. Jason dated. His last serious relationship had ended over a year before, but he’d been out with women since then. At twenty-eight, he wasn’t necessarily ready to _settle down_ , as his parents always so aptly put it, but he was at least ready for the prospect of meeting someone he might actually want to think about it with.

“I guess if I told my mom I was going with you, she wouldn’t throw a fit about me missing Thanksgiving with her,” Annabeth offered, her lips set into a thin line. “Thalia’s going to know we’re full of it, though.”

“Let me deal with Thalia,” he replied, heart soaring with a hint of hope.

The corners of Annabeth’s lips twitched upward. “No, _I’ll_ deal with Thalia.”

  


* * *

  


Percy arrived at exactly noon on the Thursday of Thanksgiving to pick Piper up. She made several grumbled remarks about it being stupid that they had to leave so early for _dinner_ , but Percy just draped his arm over her shoulder as they made their way out to his car and told her it would be fun. They hadn’t been on a road trip since before they graduated college, and while the less than three hours up to Albany hardly counted as a proper road trip, he’d prepared their classic playlist and thanked his lucky stars that she agreed to do this with him so he wouldn’t have to do it alone.

“Give me a refresher course on the cousins,” she requested once they’d escaped the city, shouting to be heard over the music instead of turning it down. “Start with the oldest, other than your siblings.”

Her boot clad feet were kicked up on her dashboard (he hated this, she did it anyway) and her gaze turned out the window beside her. She’d braided her long, dark brown hair over one shoulder and her fingers toyed with the tail of it. Percy appreciated the outfit she’d decided on for the day – a dark green cropped sweater and a high waisted skirt, paired with her trademark army boots and a pair of thigh high stockings. Nothing about it was particularly inappropriate for the occasion, but between the boots and simple bias, Percy had no doubt his father would be annoyed.

“So,” he started, also having to shout over the music, “Thalia’s the oldest, aside from Triton. My youngest uncle is her dad. She’s thirty-three. Works in… actually, I don’t really understand what she does. If you ask her, she’ll talk about it, though. Her girlfriend will be there, but I don’t remember her girlfriend’s name, either.”

“Do you know anything about these people, Perce?” Piper asked, finally looking at him, her eyebrows raised so high they were close to reaching her hairline.

“No, not really,” he admitted without the least bit of shame. Those people had never cared about him, so he didn’t see why he had to bother learning the details of their lives himself. “Bianca is my age. Her dad’s my oldest uncle. She plays the harp. Like, for a living. I don’t know how that works. All I know about her partner is that they play the cello.”

Lips pursed and turning to gaze out the window again, Piper nodded, and Percy assumed that was his cue to continue down the line. “Next up is Jason – Thalia’s brother. He’s your age and an architectural engineer, which is seriously the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. I know absolutely nothing about whoever he’s bringing, just that they apparently started dating recently.”

“You said you don’t know anything about these people, but those are actually a lot of details,” Piper observed. “I promise I’m going to forget everything, though.”

“I’m only doing this because you asked me,” Percy replied, giving her shoulder a light shove. She simply shrugged. “ _Anyway_ , next up is Nico, Bianca’s brother. He’s twenty-seven and designs like… I don’t know how to explain it. Board games? Card games?”

That got Piper’s attention, who finally turned her head toward him again, her mouth hanging open in a wide smile and her eyes as big as Percy had ever seen him. “Your cousin designs _board games_?”

“I think it’s cards,” he corrected, if only because he remembered his mom saying something about it the last time they passed the aisle full of _Pokemon_ and baseball cards. “Pretty sure it’s cards. But, yeah, he does. His boyfriend is an ER doctor.”

“His name is Nico?” Piper asked, excitement still lighting up her face. When Percy nodded, she tapped her temple with her index finger a couple times, a habit of hers whenever she wanted to commit something to memory. “That one I’m definitely going to remember. Nico and I are about to be best friends.”

“What about me?” Percy replied, looking away from the road long enough to pout at Piper.

“Get a cooler job and maybe we can be best friends again,” she said in a cruelly cool fashion, her attention returning to the passing landscapes of upstate New York. “Being best friends with a middle school gym teacher does nothing to help my credibility as an artist. It’s downright embarrassing, actually.”

The only person Percy ever let tease him about his job was Piper, and only because she’d told him he’d eat his words when he insisted he’d never set foot in another middle school his last day of eighth grade. She’d been the one to encourage him to switch his major to education when he thought he was going to lose his mind after trying to follow in his father’s footsteps and study marine biology. Aside from his mom, Piper had also been the only person who didn’t laugh in his face when he’d decided on kinesiology as his field of focus. Piper had earned the right to tease him about the fact his days were filled with whining tweens and their pungent body odor.

“Hazel is next,” Percy continued, deciding not to give Piper’s teasing any more credence. “Most of the older family members are shit to her because, like me, her parents were never married.”

“Oh, another bastard child,” Piper said with mock severity. Percy being a bastard had been a running joke between them since they’d found out the literal meaning of the word – Piper liked to say he was a bastard in every sense. 

“Yeah, but don’t say that.”

From the look on her face, Percy had a feeling Piper would have kicked him were he not driving at a dangerously high velocity. “Obviously I won’t say that, Percy, God. Saying it would only hurt your cousin, not any of the people who actually deserve it for treating her like shit.” 

“I’m just making sure,” he said defensively, voice going an octave higher, but before Piper could resort to violence, he decided to continue. “Her dad is my oldest uncle, too, so she’s Bianca and Nico’s half-sister. She and her fiance, Frank, are both veterinarians, but she’s private practice and he works for the Bronx Zoo.”

“Maybe Frank should be my new best friend,” Piper thought aloud, voice barely audible over the music. “I do like the Bronx Zoo and he could probably get me in to take some awesome pictures. I could do a whole exhibit on the impact of captivity on wild species.”

“He probably wouldn’t want to help you shit on his profession,” Percy teased – or well, maybe it wasn’t exactly teasing. He really didn’t think Frank would want to help stage a photography exhibit villainizing what he’d dedicated his life to.

Once again, it looked like Piper wanted to give Percy a nice little kick. “ _Impact_ doesn’t just mean bad things. Some zoos do amazing work in conservation and preservation of endangered species. Do I think humans keeping animals in cages to gawk at sucks? Yes, but I can acknowledge that good things happen at zoos, too, and most of the animals in captivity now were at least born there, not taken out of the wild.”

“You’re cute,” Percy said, not at all intimidated by the murderous glint in his best friend’s eyes.

“Shut up,” she replied, huffing out her nose and turning her head back toward the window. “There’s only one more, right?”

“Yup,” he confirmed. “My aunt’s daughter, Meg. She’s only twenty-two and just started work on her PhD in, I kid you not, _soil and crop sciences_ at Cornell. I didn’t even know that was a thing until my mom told me about it.”

Piper once again turned to look at Percy, a smile playing at her lips. “All of your cousins are cooler than you, Percy. I hope you realize this.”

“I thought you hated my family,” he reminded her, though he was admittedly a little glad to see her no longer outright dreading the night ahead of them. Percy’s cousins weren’t people he felt especially close to, but they also didn’t seem like _bad_ people. His dad, uncles and half-siblings, on the other hand, were definitely shitheads, and Percy knew they were who Piper had been talking about the week before.

“Obviously your brother and sister can choke,” Piper replied easily, her eyes rolling, “but I’ll reserve judgment on your cousins until I’ve at least met them.”

A disturbing thought crossed Percy’s mind as he glanced at Piper, staring out the window with a dangerous little smirk on her lips and an even more frightening mischievous glint in her eyes. “They’re off limits, Pipes. No dating my cousins. They think you’re my girlfriend.”

“I’m sorry, they think I’m your _what_?”

  


* * *

  


“You two make a terrible couple,” Thalia said under her breath, in the midst of the main living room in New York State’s governor’s mansion, the place Jason’s parents now called home. “You look like siblings. It’s gross. I don’t like this.”

Convincing Thalia to keep their secret had not been easy, and Jason didn’t know how she’d done it, but Annabeth had managed to talk his sister out of exposing them at the very first opportunity. So far the news of Jason and Annabeth supposedly finally getting together had gone over beautifully. Jason didn’t think he’d ever seen his father smile as wide as when Jason walked in with his _girlfriend_ and it turned out to be Annabeth in tow. His mother had practically screamed in delight and kissed Annabeth on both cheeks. The rest of the family had little to no interest in Jason’s personal life, but he’d heard his dad bragging to one of his uncles about how _impressive_ Annabeth was and could tell her resume made an impact. As if a potential life partner should be treated like a perspective employee.

“It’s just until New Year’s, calm down,” Jason practically whined at his sister. Even in whispers, he worried someone would overhear and the jig would be up just as soon as it started.

“There’s no way you’re making it to New Year’s,” Thalia replied, her eyes trained across the room where Annabeth stood, making casual conversation with Jason’s cousin Bianca. “You do realize Mom and Dad are going to want you to stay over for Christmas, right? They’ll expect you two to share a room.”

Jason had realized that, and he assumed Annabeth had also considered the issue. He didn’t see it as a problem. “We’ve slept in the same bed before.”

“When you were like ten,” Thalia said, rolling her eyes.

“As adults, too,” he insisted as convincingly as he could in a whisper. “And if it’s too weird, I’ll just sleep on the floor or something. We’re talking about a few nights tops, not the rest of our lives.”

“Are you sure about that?” Thalia asked, eyebrows raised tauntingly. “It’s _just_ thanksgiving, and then it’s _just_ Christmas, and then it’s _just_ New Year’s, and then it’s _just_ Hazel’s wedding, and so on, and so forth, until it’s _just_ been years and suddenly you say fuck it and get married because the parents won’t shut up about how it’s time and they want grandkids.”

In all honesty, that didn’t sound terrible to Jason. He had never been particularly attracted to Annabeth, but he loved her, and he liked being around her enough that he both worked and spent a big chunk of his personal time with her. A few times he’d even considered making one of those _if we’re not married by the time we’re forty_ pacts with her. Sure, it wouldn’t be ideal or romantic, but there were worse situations he could find himself in.

Thankfully Reyna appeared at Thalia’s side before Jason had to try fielding Thalia’s point. “Why does Jason look like he’s going to puke?”

“I told him our parents are going to expect him and Annabeth to have kids now,” Thalia replied, draping an arm across her girlfriend’s shoulder.

“Your parents are disturbingly obsessed with grandchildren,” Reyna agreed with a slow nod. Because Thalia and Reyna kept no secrets from each other, Reyna also knew about Jason and Annabeth’s performative relationship over the holidays. Less aggressive about teasing than Thalia, Reyna still thought the plan was a stupid one.

“Dad wants one before he’s in the White House,” Thalia kept pressing, looking pointedly at Jason. “Says a grandfather is always more appealing to voters or something like that. Everybody loves a grandpa.”

“Oh look, our last cousin is here,” Jason said by way of ignoring everything coming out of Thalia’s mouth, and he gestured with his chin toward the entryway into the living room.

For the first time ever, Jason’s entire family was assembled in one place – his aunt and uncles, all the cousins and their significant others, and a spattering of very young second cousins. So many people in one place made him anxious, which was why he’d been sticking so closely to Thalia, rather than trying to socialize with anyone else. Most of them seemed like fine enough people. He still wanted it all to be over and done with as soon as possible.

“Who’s that with him?” Thalia asked, and his eyes followed hers from where Percy stood to the woman beside him.

Jason had no answer, of course, but even if he did, he wouldn’t have been able to get it out because his mouth had suddenly gone very dry. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman Jason had ever seen, even with her lips set into a grimace and her brows deeply furrowed. Those lips were full, painted a subtle shade of dark, burnt orange. Her brows were carefully sculpted, and the eyes below them were large and round despite her pinched expression. Dark hair framed her face, braided over one shoulder with wispy, short strands already broken free. Light from the bay window at the front of the room struck her just right to make her hair shine, highlighting the almost black shade with warmer browns, making her glow. Next to Percy’s tall stature, she appeared small, petite, but remained imposing all the same, as if she refused to accept her own height.

“Why’s Jason drooling?” Annabeth asked, snapping Jason out of his trance. He hadn’t even realized she’d come to join him, Thalia and Reyna.

“Because you just got knocked down to third hottest girlfriend in the family,” Thalia replied, jutting her thumb in the direction of Percy and his date.

Annabeth glanced over, her ever vigilant eyes quick to take in the scene, and her head tilted slightly to one side in curiosity. “Which cousin is that again?”

“Percy,” Jason answered. He’d barely spared his own cousin a passing glance in favor of the unknown woman. “Triton and Kym’s younger brother.”

“A lot younger,” Annabeth replied, indifferent. She looked back at Thalia, eyes slightly narrowed. “Also, I’m not _actually_ a girlfriend, so I don’t think I qualify for that list.”

There was no more time to debate Annabeth’s status, because Jason’s father appeared in the middle of the living room and signaled for everyone’s attention. His dark gray hair had been perfectly styled, his full beard freshly trimmed, and he wore a suit much too formal for an event that should have been a relaxed family affair. With a few clipped words, he asked the group to follow him into the garden for a series of family photos. He said the photos were to celebrate everyone being in one place for the first time. Jason knew they were mostly for publicity.

  


* * *

  


Seeing the whole family in one place was kind of embarrassing for Percy. He couldn’t put his finger on why. It might have had something to do with his aunt and uncles’ stupid names, made stupider when they were all lined up together. Percy’s grandmother had been a bit of a hippy and apparently thought it was a cool idea to name her children after Greek gods – Demeter, the oldest of the four and only daughter; Hades, the eldest son and oddball of the group; Poseidon, Percy’s dad and world class jerk; and Zeus, the youngest who managed to put his name to clever use in political ads.

More likely, it had to do with the fact that they were pretending to be all friendly and happy when a few years before half the family would have been attacking the other half at the first opportunity.

Percy didn’t have much of an attention span for being embarrassed, though. After his little slip up of a confession in the car, Piper had been chewing him out in whispers whenever they had a moment alone. It was his own fault. She’d agreed to come to Thanksgiving with him, not pretend they were _dating_. He could have sworn he’d made the distinction, but she assured him he had not.

“I thought you were bringing a _date_ , Perseus,” Poseidon said under his breath as they congregated outside. Percy’s aunt Demeter, her daughter, Meg, and Meg’s boyfriend, were posing for pictures with Zeus and his wife while everyone else looked on. The whole family were taking turns like that, so Zeus could get plenty of fodder for social media or whatever.

“Piper is my date, Dad,” Percy replied, heaving a sigh. The date in question had decided she needed to go the bathroom as soon as Poseidon had started to approach. “We’re dating.”

Poseidon huffed out his nose, crossing his arms and dropping his voice to keep from being overheard. “Does your mother know about this?”

No, Percy’s mom did not know he was pretending to date Piper to piss his dad off – and, yes, even though Piper was mad at him for springing the detail of _dating_ on her without warning, she had still agreed to go through with the farce. Piper was great that way. 

“You know Mom loves Piper,” he decided to reply, instead of feeding further into the lie. Sally had always been fond of Piper, welcoming Percy’s best friend into their home and family all the way back to elementary school. Loving Piper meant Sally would also see right through the act. They were lucky she had gone with Paul, Percy’s step-dad, to spend the holiday with his family. Smart lady, Percy’s mom.

“Just make sure she’s on her best behavior this evening,” Poseidon grumbled. “The last thing I need is Zeus feeling smug about how much more impressive his son’s new girlfriend is compared to yours.”

There were a lot of things Percy wanted to say to his father in that moment, but he decided the fight wouldn’t be worth the hassle. He’d brought Piper for the sole purpose of pissing Poseidon off anyway. This reaction was something he should be satisfied with. Percy didn’t know anything about his cousin’s new girlfriend, but he still didn’t like the comparison, or the many implications that went along with it.

“Well, since I need to make sure she’s on her best behavior, let me just go track her down before good old Uncle Zeus needs us for pictures,” Percy said, his voice laden with sarcasm, and he didn’t wait to hear what else his father might have to say before starting back toward the house.

The governor’s mansion was annoyingly fancy and way too big to be necessary, so Percy got lost almost immediately once he was inside. His dad had a stupidly giant house, too, but Percy had been raised almost exclusively by his mother in the city, in small and cozy apartments that did not require maps to navigate. He was very seriously considering he might need to employ the classic lost child tactic of staying in one spot until someone found him when a woman turned down the hall and started walking toward him.

“Hey, do you work here?” Percy asked, signaling to her with a hand. Based on her tight pony tail, black slacks and the white blouse tucked into them, he assumed she was part of the catering staff serving dinner that evening, or maybe just general house staff made to work on the holiday. Either way, he hoped she’d be able to help.

“No?” she replied, stopping just short of him, her eyebrows shooting up and her head pulling back – and God help him, he hadn’t noticed until that second how gorgeous she was, blonde curls and startling, light gray eyes and high cheekbones that looked like they could sharpen a blade. When Percy stared at her in confusion for a second too long, she huffed a laugh. “I’m Jason’s date. Girlfriend. Whatever.”

Percy tried to ignore the rush of disappointment those words unleashed inside him and shook his head to clear away the thoughts. “Sorry, it’s just what you’re wearing, that’s how the staff is always dressed.”

“Thanks,” she replied, even more sarcasm weaved into that word than Percy had been able to pour into an entire sentence for his dad. “Since we’re discussing our dress, you should know your tie is crooked.”

Her tone had made him smile unwittingly, but the following words made it disappear just as quickly. Percy looked down at his tie – a clip on, because real ones always made him feel like he was suffocating – and she started to walk away as he moved to adjust it. Both because she was his best bet at finding his way back outside and because he clearly needed to apologize, Percy hurried to make chase.

“What did you say your name was?” Percy asked, easily catching up to her with a few long strides and then falling into step.

“I didn’t,” she said, not even sparing him a glance.

“Well, I’m Percy,” he told her, almost zooming past when she took a sharp turn down another hall.

“I know,” she told him. “Poseidon’s youngest son, right? Triton and Kym’s brother?”

The mention of his father and half-siblings always made Percy bristle. He hated being associated with them, much preferred the people who knew him as _Sally’s son_ or _Estelle’s brother_. “That’s a lot of information you have on me when I don’t know your name.”

She stopped and turned to face him. For a heartbeat Percy thought she was about to snap at him or something, but then he realized she’d stopped because they were in the mud room that led to the backyard garden where pictures were being taken. “Annabeth.”

“Jason’s girlfriend,” Percy repeated, almost in disbelief. That was oddly difficult for him to wrap his mind around. “How long have you been dating?”

Annabeth’s – wow, he couldn’t help thinking how well that name suited her – eyes narrowed. “Not long. Why?”

“No reason.” He shrugged, mostly because the reasons coming to his mind didn’t seem like the kinds of things he should be saying to his cousin’s girlfriend. Percy doubted she’d appreciate him commenting on how hot he thought she was or the fact he thought her boyfriend was a stuck up, spoiled little prick. “Sorry if I offended you back there.”

“You didn’t,” she assured him, breaking eye contact and swallowing hard. “I just need to get back out there before Jason starts looking for me.”

“Sure,” Percy agreed, though he wasn’t sure he believed her.

  


* * *

  


Jason found it slightly ridiculous that his parents had a dining room and table large enough to comfortably accommodate twenty-four people, but he also supposed such a space was necessary for political functions and whatever official hosting duties the office of governor required.

His father sat at the head of the table, naturally, with Jason’s mother, Beryl all the way at the other end. Poseidon had been given the seat of honor to Zeus’s right and their placements had decided the rest of the seating chart. At least at the table Jason could focus solely on the people immediately surrounding him – which meant Reyna and Annabeth on either side of him, Thalia to their father’s left at the end of the table. On the flip side, that put him in a bit of predicament. Percy’s absolutely stunning date sat across from Annabeth, directly in Jason’s line of sight.

Piper, Jason had learned her name was, when introductions had been made after they were seated. He wanted to say it out loud, to test the way his lips would shape it, but there hadn’t been an opportunity to do so naturally yet. Not staring proved a struggle, but it was especially hard when she scrunched her nose as she laughed or stuck her pinkie in the air when taking a drink of wine.

“So, Annabeth,” Poseidon said between massive bites of turkey and stuffing, “remind me what you do for a living?”

“I’m an architect,” Annabeth answered, using the same voice she usually saved for clients. It always made Jason laugh, because the slightly higher pitch and gentle lilt was so unlike her. Even that evening it was hard for him not to jump right into teasing her about it. “Jason and I actually work at the same firm.”

“Is that how you met?” The question came from Percy this time, seated directly across from Jason. That was probably the most he’d ever heard Percy say at one time.

Zeus boomed a laugh. “Goodness no. Those two have been inseparable since they were in diapers.”

“When you lock them in the same play pin, they don’t really have a choice,” Thalia commented, and though it earned her a glare from Zeus, the rest of the group laughed at the quip.

Seeing his opportunity, Jason took a quick drink of water to clear the lump in his throat and looked up. “What do you do, Piper?”

She seemed surprised to be addressed, blinking at Jason for a couple seconds before answering. “I’m a freelance photographer.”

“You are?” Hazel jumped in. She was seated beside Piper, in the awkward middle of the table position that made it hard to engage in conversations with either of the group’s halves. Jason had an uncomfortable feeling his mother had put Hazel there on purpose, just for the sake of avoiding having to speak to her. “Frank and I haven’t been able to find a photographer we like for the wedding yet. Honestly, I think that’s the part of planning I’m most stressed out about right now.”

“It’s stressful,” Piper agreed, her eyes lighting up and lips pulling into a faint smile. “Those pictures are going to be with you for the rest of your life, some of the most important photos you’re ever going to take.”

“ _See_ ,” Hazel said, turning to Frank beside her. “I told you it was a big deal. I’m not crazy.”

Dinner that night was Jason’s first time meeting Frank, and while he’d seen pictures of his cousin’s fiance, it was still jarring to see the couple together – they had a foot of difference in their heights and Frank was easily as wide as two Hazels, her voice high and melodic, Frank’s voice low and raspy. He didn’t know either of them well enough to make judgments on their personalities, but they were a visually fascinating couple and Jason wondered what their story was, aside from the basics of understanding they’d met at veterinary school.

“I never said you were crazy,” Frank objected, a forkful of stuffing halfway to his mouth.

Hazel glared at him for a few seconds before turning back to Piper. “He acted like I was crazy. Do you do weddings?”

“I love doing weddings,” Piper replied without hesitation, her face alight with the possibility. “If you want I can show you some of my work after dinner.”

“Yes, please,” Hazel said, her relief palpable. “The wedding is in Vancouver, though. That’s where Frank’s family is from.”

“Not a problem,” Piper assured Hazel. “The only thing I love more than weddings is traveling.”

Something about the prospect of Piper sticking around until Hazel and Frank's wedding, which wouldn't be happening until September, had Jason smiling, the lump that had been building in his throat continuing to grow, his heart beginning to race to an almost painful degree. He took a sip of water as he watched Piper and Percy leaning in to whisper to each other tenderly, and then must have swallowed wrong, because he coughed a few times. Annabeth glanced at him in a subtle show of concern, but he shook his head and took another drink, only to once again feel like he was choking on it.

"Jason," Annabeth said, her eyes slowly growing wide as she glanced at his plate, "have you been eating the stuffing?"

"What?" Jason asked between coughs and attempts to clear his throat. The stuffing had tasted weird and been extremely dry, so he'd only had a couple bites, but he nodded a second later in confirmation.

" _Jason_ ," she said again, and her wide eyed gaze turned to panic in a split second. "There's celery in the stuffing. How the hell did you not notice?"

For a few seconds Jason just stared back at her, still coughing, the information not quite processing. That explained the choking, and the heart racing, and the slowly expanding lump in his throat, and the fact that the room was beginning to spin. Jason had been deathly allergic to celery (honestly, the stupidest thing in the world to be allergic to) since they were toddlers. He wasn’t excited about a cute girl, Jason was going into anaphylaxis.

"Fuck, someone call 9-1-1," he heard Annabeth shouting. Her voice sounded distant even though she was right there beside him – except then she wasn't. 

Chairs scraped against the hardwood floor around him. Annabeth disappeared from the room. Someone, Thalia, was on the phone, panicked and shouting. Nico's boyfriend appeared at Jason's side, but Jason couldn't for the life of him remember the guy's name. That was kind of funny, because it very likely _was_ for the life of him.

The next thing Jason knew, Annabeth was back at his side, an EpiPen in hand. Of course. Annabeth had been carrying one of his EpiPens with her at all times since they were in college, mostly because Jason tended to forget to keep one on his person. Then the EpiPen was stabbed in his thigh and that was the unceremonious end to Thanksgiving dinner.

  


* * *

  


"Well, that was fun," Piper aptly observed once she and Percy were safely back in his car outside the house. "Kind of sucks that your cousin's own parents served a food he's deathly allergic to."

"At least his girlfriend had an EpiPen on her," Percy replied staring at his steering wheel, his brow furrowed. 

It had all unfolded so quickly from the moment Annabeth had realized what was happening to Jason. Percy, like most of the family, had only been able to watch on in horror. Before that moment he’d found it hard to believe that Jason and Annabeth were a couple. They’d been coolly indifferent to each other, paying more attention to those around them, but something had changed when Jason’s life had been in danger. Annabeth had been quick to action, but Percy had also noticed her hands shaking, the waver in her voice, her eyes shining with tears that she didn’t let spill over until Jason had been taken away by paramedics.

He didn’t know why he’d paid such close attention to the two of them. Percy certainly hadn’t given the rest of his cousins, let alone their relationships, that much thought. The image remained stuck in his mind, though, along with his uncle Zeus’s comment about the two of them having been inseparable since they were little.

“You’re not serious about Hazel’s wedding, are you?” Percy asked a second later, glancing at Piper as he started up the engine. In the midst of dinner he’d tried to question her about the idea, one that seemed absolutely ridiculous to him, but she’d brushed him off and then they’d been distracted by Jason almost dying.

“Of course I’m serious,” Piper replied, drawing her feet up to rest them on the dashboard again.

Percy sighed, both at her sitting position and her answer, slowly starting down the long driveway that led from the house back to the street. “Pipes, the wedding is in _September_.”

“So?” she asked. It was too dark for him to see her properly, but from the tone of her voice, Percy could perfectly picture the way one of her eyebrows would have been quirked up and the indignant curl of her lips.

“ _So_ ,” he pressed, “when I tell everyone we broke up, it’s going to make things all awkward for them. It’s not like they know we were full of shit tonight.”

“Then you just don’t tell them we broke up,” she suggested far too easily. “We can keep up the charade until after the wedding.”

“A week ago you didn’t want to do this at all,” he reminded her, confused by her insistence on this matter, and equally by his own hesitance to keep it up. Percy was sure Piper’s presence would continue to piss his dad off, which had been their whole purpose that day, but it didn’t sit well with him to drag the lie on that long. His cousins didn’t seem so bad, either. “And why’s this such a big deal to you, anyway? It’s just a wedding, not like some big opportunity or break.”

Piper stayed silent, and when he glanced in her direction, the flash of passing streetlights illuminated her face long enough for him to see she was chewing on her nails. There was something she wasn’t telling him. She only chewed her nails when she was trying to keep an uncomfortable secret.

“I haven’t had a job in six months, Perce,” she finally answered, dropping her hand to her lap. “I’ve been looking for something in the meantime – retail or food service or whatever, I don’t care – but I guess the gap in my resume while working for myself is too big or something. No one has even called me in for an interview. My savings is almost completely dry. At the rate things are going, I’m not going to be able to make rent next month. This job won’t pay until September, yeah, but I’m really not in a position to be turning down any work. I need this.”

“Shit,” Percy mumbled, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter.

Money had been tight for Piper since her junior year in high school. Her dad’s acting career had come to a disastrous end after some overblown scandals, his money lost to bad investments and some issues with the IRS Percy had never quite understood. Percy’s mom had let Piper stay with them in the city for her senior year of high school, though she’d had to transfer out of the private school she’d attended with Percy, but Piper had been on her own financially since then. Scholarships, loans, and part time jobs had gotten her through college, and for a while after graduation she’d managed to get steady work. Percy knew the last year or two she’d been struggling, but he hadn’t realized it had gotten _that_ bad.

Percy wasn’t exactly rolling in cash himself, living off the meager salary of a middle school gym teacher, but he had a few advantages – one, his dad had paid for his school, so he didn’t have loans, and, two, he _could_ be rolling in cash if he sucked it up and asked his dad for the kind of allowance his half-siblings got. It was hard for him to imagine her situation, the uncertainty and fear she must have been grappling with, and for months she’d been keeping those things to herself. He was a jerk for not noticing something was wrong before then. There had to have been signs.

“Okay,” he agreed after giving it all of ten seconds of thought. “We’ll keep the act up until September, but I have one condition.”

“What is it?” she asked, tentativeness turning her voice quiet.

“You’re moving in with me,” he told her, using the same voice he usually saved for his students, trying his best to sound authoritative. “I’ve got that spare room. Well, it’s more like an oversized closet, but whatever. It’ll do until you’re back on your feet.”

He expected her to object, fight him, start to insist on terms like paying half the rent, but instead he heard her sniffle from the darkness of the passenger seat. “Thank you.”

  


* * *

  


Jason had an IV in his arm, an oxygen cannula up his nose, and now wore nothing but a thin hospital gown with a scratchy blanket to cover him. The ER room was cramped and cold. He wanted to sleep, felt exhausted, but no matter how many times he closed his eyes, he remained awake.

In the initial couple hours after his arrival at the emergency room, Jason’s parents had been there, along with Thalia and Reyna. Awkwardly, his cousin Nico and Nico’s boyfriend – who Jason now knew and would remember was named Will – had also tagged along, mostly because Will had helped administer medical assistance before and after the paramedics had arrived at the house. They’d all left once Jason had stabilized, though. Only Annabeth still remained, sitting in that cramped and cold room with him, in what looked to be a very uncomfortable plastic chair, her legs crossed and her focus almost exclusively on the book she was reading on her phone.

“You don’t have to stay,” Jason said for what felt like the twentieth time, around one in the morning. His oxygen saturation was still a mess and the doctors didn’t want to let him go until it normalized. “I know you wanted to be in line for that Black Friday sale by now.”

“If you think I care about a sale on Lego more than I care about you, I’m going to take that cannula out of your nose and let you suffocate,” she replied without looking up from her phone.

The threat made him smile. She’d been so shaken earlier, but if she could plot ways to murder him, it meant she’d calmed down. “At least my parents believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we’re dating now.”

“Were they doubting it before?” she asked with a scoff. “Your dad would not shut up about me all night. I was right about them starting to plan our wedding already.”

“Thanks for coming, either way,” he told her, trying once again to close his eyes in hopes of being able to fall asleep. “Christmas is going to be interesting. Mom said they’re inviting everyone to stay the whole weekend.”

Annabeth hummed noncommittally. “At least your cousins don’t seem that bad.”

“There’s just so many of them,” he complained, shifting in the overly firm hospital bed to try and get comfortable.

He hadn’t expected to have such a problem with the sheer number of people, but it had been hard to focus and keep track of everyone. Half their names had already been forgotten. Jason couldn’t keep his cousins Triton and Kym’s kids straight, either, but at least no one really seemed to expect him to interact with them. A whole four day weekend of trying to socialize and keep up with a mass of people he only barely knew sounded worse than spending Thanksgiving in an ER.

“By the way, what had you distracted all night?” Annabeth asked, making Jason’s eyes shoot open. “You haven’t accidentally eaten celery in years.”

After the close call of his allergic reaction, Jason had almost forgotten about his strange fixation on his cousin’s girlfriend. Heat rushed to his cheeks and he turned his head away in case Annabeth might be looking at him. She’d know what a blush meant and she would never let him hear the end of it. He’d been lucky he hadn’t been flushed over dinner, and probably had the celery to thank for saving him from inevitably being caught.

“I think the last time was when we got wasted after your college graduation,” he replied instead of answering, hoping she might drop the subject. “Remember, we stumbled into that sketchy diner at three in the morning?”

His distraction must have worked, because Annabeth snorted a laugh. “You definitely almost died that night. Imagine having everyone remember you as that guy who was killed by lukewarm chicken noodle soup.”

“People would remember me for other things,” he objected, though he couldn’t think of what those things might be off the top of his head.

“Nope,” Annabeth replied, a smile in her voice. “They would remember you as that guy killed by lukewarm chicken noodle soup, because I’d be the one reminding them of it at every opportunity.”

When Jason summoned the courage to look back at Annabeth, he discovered she had abandoned her book and was grinning back at him just as he’d suspected. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want you to be my fake girlfriend anymore. It’s not worth this abuse.”

“I’m glad I was there tonight, though,” she said, both her voice and expression softening. 

Jason figured neither of them wanted to think about what might have happened if she _hadn’t_ been there. No one would have had an EpiPen for him, and he doubted anyone else would have noticed something was wrong with him before he passed out. He also chose not to think about the fact that his mother had probably selected the menu for the night, even though she hadn’t cooked the meal herself. Either Beryl had forgotten Jason was allergic to celery and not thought to mention it to the chef, or had been too wrapped up in the party to think to warn him.

He held his hand out across the roughly one foot of space that separated them. Annabeth didn’t hesitate to take it. If this night had been any indication, he was going to need his best friend even more next month. “So, we’re still on for Christmas?”

She rolled her eyes, but nodded. “I guess we’re still on for Christmas.”


	2. Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve came in a flurry, both literally and figuratively. 

The figurative flurry was a result of getting Piper moved out of her studio apartment in Brooklyn to Percy’s place in The Bronx. In that time she also got a last minute seasonal job taking awkward posed photos at the Santa meet and greet in a Jersey strip mall. She had to wear a stupid elf’s costume that everyone agreed was wholly inappropriate for working with children and Percy never once let her hear the end of it. Percy had to finish the semester at school, which was a lot less stressful for a gym teacher than the others, but still came with a bit of extra work in the form of hustling to get grades in. His night of stressing while trying to focus long enough to get everything input before the grade deadline was met with Piper going to great extremes to distract the ever living fuck out of him, well deserved revenge for his weeks of teasing her.

When Percy’s break started, they received a second visitor – Grover Underwood, who decided to come home to the city while on his own break. Between Grover on the couch with all his luggage, and Piper in the spare room with all her boxes, there had barely been enough space for a tree. They still made it work. It wasn’t Christmas without a tree, after all.

“Wait, so,” Grover said, over dinner on Christmas Eve Eve (which had been tradition for the three of them to celebrate together for basically as long as they’d known each other), “you’re telling me you’ve been living together for a month _and_ you’re telling everyone you’re dating? And plan to keep this up for another _year_?”

Percy shrugged and Piper nodded, neither of them bothered by the judgmental tone in Grover’s voice. After Thanksgiving, they’d discussed the plan at length. Living together did add an extra layer of complexity, but they had lived together before and would have been doing it regardless of the lie they were telling Percy’s family. Putting on a show for that long wouldn’t be as difficult as it sounded, though. 

Percy had thought about it long and hard, and he could only think of a handful of times they would have to see the people they were lying to before the wedding in September – Christmas, of course, was the big one; on New Year’s his cousin Thalia would be throwing a party in the city, and while Percy didn’t explicitly _have_ to go, he figured he might as well to be polite; the next event would be Easter, when his uncle Zeus hosted a massive and well publicized annual charity Easter Egg Hunt; after that it would just be the Fourth of July and then smooth sailing to the wedding. All added up, it would be maybe ten days total they had to act like a couple. Percy could foresee no issues. Honestly, they’d pulled off more complex pranks over the years. 

“You don’t think this is going to blow up in your faces?” Grover asked, skeptically looking between them. He’d always been the voice of reason. Well, he’d been the voice of _this is a bad idea_ , while going along with each and every bad idea, and then the voice of _I told you so_ after the fact.

“Mom is the only person we have to worry about,” Percy replied, admittedly a little nervous about the prospect of facing his own mother while perpetuating this particular farce. “We’ll have to feel her out tomorrow, but even if she calls us out on the bullshit, we can probably convince her to go along with it all.”

Poseidon had called Sally almost immediately after Thanksgiving dinner to complain about Percy’s new relationship. Sally had promptly called Percy to ask him, _what the actual fuck_. He’d felt like shit lying to her, and he and Piper had debated just fessing up, but they figured the fewer people who knew the truth the better. There was also a chance she would disprove of the fact that they were lying just so Piper could get a job working Hazel’s wedding. Over the phone, Sally had accepted Percy’s explanation that the two of them had simply decided to give dating a try after years of being so close. Percy wasn’t sure it would hold once his mom saw them in person.

“This is a bad idea,” Grover decided, the frown on his lips scrunched in a way that it made his goatee skew to one side as his chin wrinkled.

“Are we going to do relationship advice time, then?” Piper chimed in, one cheek full of tofu as she spoke, her eyebrows raised at Grover. Her gaze turned to Percy. “I think we all know what the rule is when Grover decides to comment on our love lives.”

“We’re not talking about your _love lives_ ,” Grover quickly objected, his voice going up an octave in panic, “and you don’t just get to make up rules. I never agreed to this!”

Humming, lips pursed, Percy looked at his best friend with feigned pity. “Sorry, G-man, it _is_ the rule.”

“Ask it,” Piper demanded, slamming her hand on the table. “Ask him the question. Give it to him good, Perce.”

Percy sat up straighter in his seat, enjoying putting his best friend in the hot seat more than he probably should have, and grinned at Grover. “So, tell us, Mr. Underwood, why did you break up with Juniper?”

Grover glared at Percy and Piper both, chewing his food in silence. Four years prior, Grover had broken up with his long term girlfriend and refused to tell Percy and Piper why. Since then, they had insisted he wasn’t allowed to comment on their romantic endeavors until he gave them a straight answer. He had remained stubbornly silent on the subject.

“I’m trading you two in,” Grover finally replied, pointing his fork between Percy and Piper. “Once this trip is over, it’s time for new best friends.”

That was the end of their discussion.

The literal flurry was, well, a snow flurry. It started in the morning, when Percy, Grover and Piper loaded up in Percy’s car and drove across town to his parents’ place in Manhattan to enjoy an actual Christmas celebration ahead of the unfortunate obligation of spending the weekend with his dad’s family. Grover, the lucky bastard, would actually be staying there until Percy and Piper returned to the city. Percy kind of hoped it would turn into a proper snow so he’d have an excuse to duck out of the whole dumb weekend thing.

He loved Christmas at his mom’s. No matter how old he got, Percy didn’t think he’d ever grow tired of the scent of apple cider and cinnamon that struck him as soon as he stepped in the front door, or the tinsel and popcorn covered tree glowing in the corner of the living room, or the sight of stockings packed with treats and hung on the entertainment center. The apartment Sally, Paul and Estelle called home wasn’t one Percy had lived in growing up, but it didn’t need to be. The three of them were what made it his favorite place in the world, as comforting and welcoming as any of the past places he’d lived, maybe even more so than some.

At eleven years old, Estelle no longer greeted Percy with the enthusiasm she had when she’d been little. In fact, that morning, she barely acknowledged him at all, just nodding in his direction and remaining where she sat on the couch, eyes locked on her phone. Not even the unusual presence of Piper and Grover could pull her away from it.

“She has a _boyfriend_ ,” Sally whispered a little while after they had arrived, tucked away in the kitchen where Estelle could not overhear them gossiping about her. “He’s spending break with his grandparents in Montana and she’s very upset that they can’t do cute coupley Christmas things together.”

Since starting his teaching job, Percy had become a bit of an expert on the ins and outs of middle school romances, mostly because a few of his students had taken to coming to him to lament their relationship woes, so he nodded in solemn understanding of the gravity of Estelle’s situation. “It must be a very difficult time for her.”

“Not for you, though,” Sally observed, her eyes narrowing, “since Piper’s living with you and all. You can do all sorts of cute coupley Christmas things with no problems at all.”

“Yep,” he replied quickly, suddenly very interested in investigating the ham Sally was in the midst of preparing. Lying to his mom about Piper really did bother him.

“Your father hoped I’d be able to tell him it was all some big joke,” she continued, staring Percy down as she carefully placed pineapple slices around the ham. “I told him _my_ son wouldn’t lie to me about something so important. Maybe some other woman’s son would lie to her about starting to date his best friend of over two decades, who he’d never once so much as expressed romantic interest in, but not mine. He’d definitely tell me if he was acting just to push his fath–”

“Oh my _god_ , Mom,” Percy groaned, throwing his head back and leaning against the counter. “ _Fine_ , yes, we’re full of shit. Are you happy?”

Sally beamed with pride at having so easily broken Percy’s resolve, pointing for him to pass her the barbecue sauce. “I am, actually, thank you.”

“Are you going to tell Poseidon?” Percy asked. It felt like he was a teenager again, worried his mom was going to call his dad over a failed exam or some stupid reason he got detention, and that he’d end up on the receiving end of some endless lecture about responsibility.

“Percy, you’re almost thirty,” she replied, her focus now almost solely on finishing drenching the ham in barbecue sauce (and he was so mad he had to leave in a couple hours and wasn’t going to be able to enjoy that ham). “If you want to lie to your father, your Aunt and Uncles, your half-siblings, and all of your cousins, that’s your prerogative.”

Despite the heavy handed unspoken moral objection, Percy was relieved. “I’m sorry I lied to you about it.”

“Oh, I don’t really care about that,” she told him, waving the thought off without even looking up.

“Then why’d you go on that whole guilt trip rant?”

Straightening up and setting her barbecue sauce aside, Sally reached out and patted Percy’s cheek. “Because I bet Paul fifty bucks you and Piper weren’t actually dating and I didn’t want to wait for you two to finally fess up on your own to collect my prize.” 

  


* * *

  


“Annabeth, we have plenty of time, calm down,” Jason said, sitting again in Annabeth’s office, this time watching as she tore the place apart in search of a client file she needed to take with her to work on over their long weekend.

She put her hands on her hips and blew a stray curl out of her face, eyes scanning the desk in front of her like she was deciding the best way to take it apart, screw by screw. “If I’ve lost this file they’re going to fire me.”

“No one is going to fire you,” he assured her, which he could say with confidence because he’d seen what happened when someone lost a client file first hand. He’d actually lost one himself. It really wasn’t a big deal. Literally everything they did was backed up on computers. “Didn’t they send you the digital copy? It’s all the same stuff. You can just print a new hard copy when we get to my parents’ house.”

“This is the _Novak_ file, Jason,” Annabeth replied, panic clearly beginning to set in, and rightfully so. “That paranoid, ten thousand year old psycho doesn’t let us do anything digitally. All we have is _that one file_.”

“Shit.” Jason jumped to his feet and crossed to her desk in one long stride to help her sort through the stacks of papers and files on her desk for the third time. “When was the last time you saw it?”

Flashing him a thankful smile, Annabeth instead moved to look through her filing cabinet again. “I haven’t seen it. I asked Calypso to pull it for me last night, but I didn’t set eyes on it myself before I left.”

“Should I check her desk?” he asked, shooting his thumb over his shoulder toward the door. Calypso worked as secretary for all four of the non-partner architects at the firm, which meant she had a lot on her plate at any given moment. It didn’t seem outlandish to him that she might have pulled it and left it on her own desk when something else came up, especially in the rush to get things done the night before Christmas Eve.

Annabeth shook her head. “I checked it already and I don’t want to make a mess of her space.”

Before Jason could make his next suggestion, there was a knock on Annabeth’s door. They both froze, her eyes going wide. If someone found out she’d misplaced the file at all, even if she found it in the end, it would still look terrible to the higher ups. Annabeth was on track to make junior partner in the next few years, but that was the kind of mistake that could get her bumped in favor of someone else, and the sexist assholes among the firm’s senior partners were always looking for excuses to keep Annabeth back.

Thankfully, when the door opened and a head poked in, it was just Leo. “What the fuck are you two doing here on Christmas Eve?”

“We stopped by to pick up the Novak file before we left for Jason’s parents’ place,” Annabeth explained, her shoulders slumped in defeat even though relief was written all over her face. “The problem is, I can’t find it because I’m an idiot who lost it and is now going to start the new year without a job.”

“Novak?” Leo asked, still standing in the doorway, his brow furrowed in thought. “Oh shit, I think I know where it is. Hold on.”

Clearly hoping Jason might have an explanation, Annabeth looked at him with brows raised, but all he could do was shrug.

Jason had met Leo freshman year of college. They’d had the same major and most of the same classes. In those early months of their first semester Jason had tried very hard to avoid Leo, because the guy could be seriously annoying and seemed like the type of person who didn’t take anything seriously. That had been a big mistake. Leo did have a penchant for making trouble, but he was smart, loved his work, and had ended up saving Jason’s ass in school more than once. He was also a really dependable and wonderful friend in general. Jason had introduced Leo to Annabeth and the three of them had stuck together ever since, all the way to the firm at which they now worked.

Not a minute later, Leo returned, a giant grin on his face and the very file they were looking for held in triumph above his head. “And, as always, it’s Valdez to the rescue.”

“I love you,” Annabeth breathed, slamming her cabinet drawer shut and crossing the office to where Leo stood.

“I know,” he replied, nodding sagely, “but I’m not giving it to you until you answer a question.”

“Leo,” she said, and her tone was the one Jason never had the guts to defy, “give me the file.”

“Answer my question.”

“Give me the file.”

“ _Why_ ,” Leo started, still holding the file above his head, “are you going to Jason’s parents’ place for Christmas? Are you two dating?”

Since Leo and Annabeth were exactly the same height, Jason thought the guy was being pretty brave. She could take him in a fight, something they’d actually confirmed once in college, and an angry Annabeth would not hesitate to start one with him in the middle of her office. Jason had a feeling the only reason she hesitated was because she didn’t want to wrinkle her clothes before heading to Albany.

“Obviously we’re not dating,” she answered, though she didn’t look happy about surrendering. “Now, will you give me the goddamned file, Leo?”

Leo was truly a senseless man, because he did not give Annabeth the file. “Then why are you going to his place? You usually go to Boston for Christmas.”

Annabeth looked to Jason again, all the rage that should have been aimed at Leo turned on him. _This is your fault_ , she seemed to say with her eyes, _you explain it to him_.

“We told my parents we’re dating so they’ll leave me alone for the holidays,” Jason said, sighing after and coming to easily steal the file from where Leo held it up in the air. “Sometime after New Year’s we’re going to tell them we broke up, so from now on they won’t keep trying to convince us to get together.”

Eyes going dangerously wide and mouth dropping open in a toothy grin, Leo looked between them for several seconds. “Oh my god, you’re _fake dating_.”

Rolling her eyes, Annabeth snapped the file out of Jason’s hand and turned to try sorting out a little of the mess she’d made of her desk. “It’s not like that. Stop being weird about it.”

“What’s it like, then?” Leo pressed, dropping himself into one of the guest chairs in her office. “You’re going to spend the weekend with his family. I assume that means you’re going to share a bed, right? Then you act all lovey dovey all weekend and suddenly it’s like, ‘Oh no! There are _sparks_ here! Repressed feelings! We’ve actually been in love since we were five!’ Things get awkward around the office for months because you’re _pining_ for each other – lingering glances and despondent sighs, wishing the other person would notice. It all culminates on Valentine’s Day, and then you finally fuck and live happily ever after like the gross, cliché romantic comedy I always knew you two were.”

“You need a life, Leo,” Jason replied. If he’d thought there was even the slightest possibility of something like that happening, Jason would never have suggested the scheme to begin with. There were definitely no repressed feelings between him and Annabeth.

“Valentine’s Day,” Leo insisted, pointing first at Jason and then at Annabeth. “I’m calling it now. You two are banging on Valentine’s Day.”

Jason could tell Annabeth was about to reach her Leo Limit for the day. She’d always had one. Most of the time she could go whole weeks without ever reaching it, but on days like this, when he was especially aggravating and she was already short fused from stress, her Leo Limit became dangerously low.

She turned around, crossing her arms and leaning against her desk. “Hey, Leo, where did you find the file?”

“It was in my office,” he answered with a shrug.

“You’re not working the Novak contract,” Annabeth keenly observed, her eyes narrowing. “So, why was the file I asked Calypso for last night in _your_ office?”

Leo shot to his feet and clapped his hands once. “You two have a wonderful Christmas. I will see you both on Monday.”

“Stop making out with my assistant on company time, Valdez,” Annabeth shouted as he rushed out the door, something she only did because they were fairly certain no one else would be in the office.

“Absolutely not!” Leo called back.

  


* * *

  


Just to spite Percy, a proper snow did start to fall – it waited until he and Piper were only twenty minutes away from his Uncle Zeus’s place, though, so they had no excuse for ditching the weekend.

“We better not get stuck up here longer than the weekend,” Piper grumbled from the passenger seat, her feet on the dash as always, while she ate from a bag of chocolate covered popcorn Percy’s mom had given them on their way out. That bag was meant to be shared, but Percy was pretty sure Piper would finish it all herself by the time they made it to their destination.

“Neither of us have to work on Monday,” he reminded her, though he also feared being stuck with his extended family longer than explicitly necessary.

Piper groaned, shoving another handful of popcorn in her mouth. “Don’t remind me I’m already unemployed again.”

“Didn’t you get an offer from the JC Penney’s portrait studio?” Percy asked, trying not to sound pushy or judgmental.

Another groan, another handful of popcorn shoved into her mouth. “Don’t remind me about _that_ , either.”

“If you don’t want the job, don’t take it,” he replied, not feeling even remotely bad for laughing at her. Percy didn’t want Piper to take an offer that would make her miserable. The whole reason he’d insisted she move in with him was so she wouldn’t have to do anything out of desperation just to keep a roof over her head. She wouldn’t be happy depending on him long, he knew her well enough to be sure of that, but she had a little wiggle room now.

“I think I’m going to take it,” she admitted when she had finished chewing her popcorn. “I’m going to let them pay me just over minimum wage to spend all day taking bad pictures of unhappy families that are going to be thrown away in a year or two when the parents get divorced.”

“And babies,” Percy offered, glancing over quick enough to flash her a smile. “You’ll take pictures of babies, too.”

“The kid who did my interview said people bring their pets in a lot,” Piper added, her bottom lip curled into a pout, but her tone indicating she took hope from this piece of information.

“Kid?” Percy asked, not entirely sure he actually wanted to know.

This time Piper sighed instead of groaning, but she returned to stuffing her face with popcorn, talking around the mouthfuls. “I’m pretty sure he was like twenty-one, tops. He’s going to be my boss now.”

Percy held his hand out over the center console. With another sigh, Piper took it. “Grover and I will come have you take our pictures before he leaves. You can have us do all the best cheesy couple poses. It’ll be great.”

“I need better friends,” Piper grumbled, but he could see her smiling out of the corner of his eye and she kept hold of his hand. 

  


* * *

  


To her credit, Jason’s mother had done an amazing job decking the halls of the New York state gubernatorial mansion for the holiday season. There were three Christmas trees all decorated to the nines – one in the foyer as soon as guests arrived, one on the dining room where formal and political events had been hosted all season long, and a third in the family room, where most of the family’s celebrations would be happening. Garlands and ribbons hung everywhere the eye could see, adorned with plenty of lights and bells. Nutcrackers, angels, reindeer statues, and just about every other imaginable Christmas themed decoration made at least one appearance somewhere in the house, to the point there was not a single place Jason could look and not know explicitly what holiday they had come to celebrate.

There were wreaths on all the guest bedroom doors, labeled with the occupants’ names. It was strange when he arrived, heading upstairs and finding _Jason & Annabeth_ written in golden calligraphy on the wooden plaque that hung in the center of their wreath. Even more disturbing was the gift basket prepared for them inside, which included a box of condoms among the treats and toiletries Beryl had prepared for them.

“Your mom is just so thoughtful,” Annabeth commented dryly, as she picked that box up before anything else and displayed it for him. “I wonder if everyone got these, or if it was a special addition just for us.”

“I don’t think I want to know,” Jason replied, growing increasingly uncomfortable as he considered both possibilities, along with the occupants of the neighboring rooms. Specifically, the room to the right of their door, which Jason had noticed was labeled _Percy & Piper_.

Annabeth laughed, tossing the box across the room to him, which he fumbled for a few seconds in surprise. “I wouldn’t trust condoms from her, anyway. She probably poked holes in them.”

On that, he agreed with Annabeth. Jason hadn’t anticipated his parents’ grandbaby fever getting _worse_ when he brought Annabeth home for Thanksgiving, but unfortunately they’d cranked the nonsense up several notches. If they said something in front of Annabeth that weekend or, God forbid, in front of the rest of the family, Jason was pretty sure he would dissolve into mist and cease to exist.

“Looks like we have a scheduled agenda for the evening, too,” Annabeth said, bringing Jason out of his thoughts. He grabbed his suitcase and dragged it over to the queen sized bed they’d be sharing that weekend, hefting it up so he could start unpacking as Annabeth had already started to do. She passed him a half sheet of paper that had apparently been on their pillows.

“We get a whole hour to settle in. How generous,” Jason observed, his eyes scanning the page in his hand. The laundry list of forced Christmas traditions scheduled for the evening had him exhausted already. “Then we need to be downstairs for a gingerbread house building competition.”

“Which we’ll win,” Annabeth declared as she sorted through clothes.

“Obviously,” he agreed without a second thought. “After that, dinner, carols by the fire – gag me – and a dramatic reading of _The Night Before Christmas_ by my dad, then the kids go to bed and we have adults-only time with eggnog and a white elephant gift exchange.”

Annabeth snorted, setting her emptied suitcase aside and sitting on the edge of the bed where it had just been. “You say _adults-only_ like it’s so risque and not just going to be your dad getting tipsy and embarrassing your mom in front of everyone for a few hours.”

“Wait, though, white elephant gift exchange?” Jason repeated, glancing up at Annabeth with eyebrows raised. She stared back at him before letting out a heavy sigh. A second later, she’d leaned down and picked up a small, wrapped gift, which she promptly threw at him across the bed. “What’s this?”

“Your gift for the exchange,” she told him, rolling her eyes. “I knew you’d forget.”

Jason smiled at the tiny box, wrapped in a shiny red, green and white paper with a golden ribbon tied around it. “I owe you one.”

With a hum in agreement, Annabeth got to her feet and grabbed some clothes she’d set out to change into – an ugly Christmas sweater, as requested by Jason’s mother, because that was the only thing that could have possibly made this Christmas Eve more cliché. “Don’t worry, I’m keeping a tab. Someday I’ll come around to collect.”

  


* * *

  


Percy hadn’t seen his dad when he and Piper first arrived, so it was when they came down to begin their carefully scheduled festivities that he finally said hello. The hug was stiff and formal, and then Poseidon took a look at Piper and frowned in disapproval. 

Her sweater certainly met his Aunt Beryl’s request. It was quite possibly the _ugliest_ Christmas sweater Percy had ever seen in his life – a nasty shade of too bright for the season green, with sequined stars dotting the body of it, golden tinsel draped across the front and both sleeves, and ornaments dangling from each strand. The look was completed by twinkling lights, powered by a battery pack built into the fabric. Piper had been working on that sweater all month, customizing it by hand in her free time from parts she picked up at second hand stores until she was satisfied by how over the top it was. 

Ugliness, Percy was sure, wasn’t what Poseidon took issue with, though. The sweater was also cropped, her jeans cut low enough that her bellybutton was exposed, and she’d chosen a very festive, dangling holly bellybutton ring to accessorize with.

“I see you have a new piercing, Piper,” Poseidon observed, with all the subtlety of a monkey armed with cymbals.

Despite the fact that most of the family had already assembled and probably heard what Poseidon had said, along with the judgment in his tone, Piper smiled and pointed directly to her bellybutton. “Oh, this old thing? No, I got this in high school. I _did_ recently get a new piercing, though, you just can’t _see_ it. At least not while I’m wearing clothes.”

While Poseidon let out a weary sigh, Percy watched Jason choke on a drink of hot chocolate, spilling a bit from his mug on his not-actually-ugly ugly sweater. A few others around the room raised their eyebrows while Jason went in search of napkins and Jason’s sister and girlfriend laughed at the scrambling. Percy’s quick scan of the group turned into a double take, his eyes landing back on Jason’s girlfriend – _Annabeth_ , he remembered from the handful times he’d heard it over Thanksgiving dinner – because she was wearing the same sweater as Percy. Exactly the same, down to the headache inducing red and white geometric patterns on a green background and the fuzzy, googley eyed llama on the front with 3-D hat and scarf.

Annabeth’s mouth dropped open, her shoulders twitching in what he assumed was a scoff when she’d also had a second to take in his identical outfit, then Thalia said something beside her and she looked away.

“Perseus,” Poseidon said, startling Percy out of his shock. From his tone, Percy got the impression he’d said it a few times already. “Are you even listening to me?”

Pretending he had been, Percy focused back on what his dad was saying. He tried to pay attention to the short lecture on, well, _something_. Percy wasn’t paying attention, though. His eyes kept drifting across the room to Annabeth, catching her glaring back at him several times while she made conversation with Thalia and Thalia’s girlfriend. Thankfully, when his dad talked, Percy wasn’t really expected to do anything but listen and nod, though that afternoon he also draped an arm around Piper’s shoulder just to enjoy the wrinkle of his dad’s nose.

It wasn’t long before Percy was saved by gingerbread, which he figured no one had ever been able to say before. Beryl directed the family into the massive dining room where they’d had Thanksgiving dinner. The room had been transformed with Christmas décor, a tree, and a massive spread of gingerbread house fixings – plenty of the building blocks they would need, icing to put it all together, and a massive assortment of candy for personalizing their structures arrayed in bowls all along the table.

Along with Beryl and Zeus at the front of the room was a photographer. Percy kind of felt bad for the guy, having to give up his holiday to take a bunch of pictures of some other person’s family doing Christmasy things. He also felt a little bad for himself, and the rest of the family, because it was in that moment he realized this Christmas experience was mostly a publicity stunt.

Not one to let his holiday be ruined, he decided to make the most of the two hours they’d been given to construct their dream gingerbread house. Percy settled in with Piper at the table, the two of them taking quick stock of the tools at their disposal and deciding on tasks. To start, Piper took charge of icing duty and Percy held their pieces in place. They didn’t want to try anything too fancy construction wise, just get four walls and a roof up and make it flashy with candy accents.

For the most part all the teams were paired off, but down at the far end of the table Percy saw his brother and sister working with their kids – Triton had three, the oldest seven and the youngest two and a half; Kym had four, her oldest was six, but her youngest twins weren’t even a year old yet and, therefore, were off with their nanny or something. 

He’d never gotten along with his half-siblings. They blamed him for the affair their father had with his mom even though he literally hadn’t been born until after it had ended. Growing up, despite being significantly older than him, they treated him like competition, both for attention from Poseidon and for a place in their dad’s will. Now that they knew Percy wanted neither, they acted superior, stuck their noses up at him. Percy wasn’t sure which he preferred.

“Hey,” Piper said, snapping her fingers in front of his face and making his head snap back toward her, “those weirdos over there are showing everyone up. We need to do something or we’re going to lose.”

 _Those weirdos over there_ were Jason and Annabeth. Percy glanced across the table at what they were doing and discovered they’d constructed a two story gingerbread monstrosity, complete with a chimney and front porch. The weirdos (Piper was right for calling them that) were barely even speaking to each other as they worked in tandem on their elaborate decorations. Compared to the scowl she wore while working on that house, the daggers Annabeth had been staring at Percy earlier seemed downright friendly. Apparently Jason did something she didn’t like while piping icing icicles, because she turned that scowl on him for several seconds.

“Do you think we can get another story on this thing?” Percy asked, looking back at the shabby, basic house he and Piper had constructed. It was kind of tilting to one side already even though they’d used alarming amounts of icing to secure each piece.

“We would have to take the roof off,” Piper replied, sounding as terrified by that prospect as Percy felt. The whole thing would probably collapse.

Percy considered the construction for another few seconds, head tilted to one side as he attempted to problem solve. They definitely needed a second story if they were going to stand a chance against his psycho cousin and that psycho cousin’s adorably angry girlfriend. “What if we build a new base, and then stack what we already have on top of it?”

“Sounds like a terrible idea,” she said with a sigh. “Let’s do it, but I think we’re still going to need to take more extreme measures.”

  


* * *

  


Gingerbread, icing and candy weren’t exactly ideal building materials, but Jason and Annabeth had built so many display models for projects together over the years that even with the clumsy tools they were given, things came together quickly and well. They’d brainstormed a plan in the first five minutes of construction time and then went straight to work, barely having to speak five words to each other as they erected their two story house. Jason would definitely have to get a picture of it when they finished to send to Leo.

He had just finished icing the snow covered roof when the first jellybean pegged him square in the forehead. Jason froze in place, blinking twice before he looked up just in time to see another jellybean lobbed at him from across the table. This one hit him in the cheek just as the culprit let out a shameless cackle. Piper, in her twinkling sweater, held a handful of jelly beans and was already taking aim with a third projectile. When she caught his eye, she didn’t try to play innocent, but she did opt to pop that third jellybean in her own mouth rather than try launching at him while he was watching.

Confused, but a little amused, Jason watched Piper for a few more seconds, waiting until she had focused back on the house she and Percy were building to return to his own work. A smile played at his lips while he lined windows with more icing-snow accents, until the unthinkable happened – another jellybean shot across the table, this time hitting Annabeth on the crown of the head.

“What the fuck,” Annabeth whispered, thankfully not loud enough for any of the kids on the far end of the table to hear. When she looked up, Jason followed her gaze. This time it was Percy throwing the jellybeans, and he was far less discrete than Piper, taking his second shot while both Annabeth and Jason were looking straight at him and grinning shamelessly.

Annabeth had inhuman reflexes, so she caught that second bean in the air and the grin on Percy’s face disappeared in an instant. She didn’t hesitate to throw it right back at him, nailing him in the forehead even though he tried to dodge. When Percy stared back in surprise, Annabeth flipped him the bird and went straight back to carefully lining their roof with gumdrops. Jason was about to follow suit and get back to his task, but then Percy grabbed another jelly bean and took a third shot at Annabeth. This one landed just like the first and she snapped back up.

“Seriously?” she practically hissed, earning a few confused glances from the other teams around them. Percy shrugged and that nonchalance perfectly agitated Annabeth into grabbing one of her gumdrops and chucking it at him across the table.

Jellybeans and gumdrops flew freely after that, both Percy and Annabeth seeming to forget about constructing entirely. Jason was distracted by their fight, too, but when his eyes flickered over to Piper beside Percy, he noticed her carefully lifting their original gingerbread house to place it on another level she had constructed. The jellybean attack hadn’t just been to give Jason and Annabeth a bad time, it had been a purposefully planned distraction so the other two could get ahead.

The obvious solution would be to point this out to Annabeth and pull her away from the jellybean-gumdrop war so they could focus on their own house, but there was too much candy in the air for Jason to be thinking clearly. Instead he picked up a gumdrop himself and took aim. It landed perfectly, right between Piper’s eyes, and she was so shocked that she dropped the half of the house she’d been trying to move, the whole thing shattering when it hit the table. Piper let out an indignant cry and the entire table turned to look at the group of four just in time to see Percy and Annabeth peg each other with candy for the umpteenth time.

“What’s going on down there?” Beryl asked from the head of the table. Like a bunch of kids caught doing something they weren’t supposed to – which, Jason supposed, they kind of were – they all turned to look at her with wide eyes.

“They started it,” Annabeth replied, pointing to Piper and Percy. Yep, they were definitely acting like kids.

“Okay, tattletale,” Percy scoffed. “What are you, six?”

“You threw a _jellybean_ at me,” Annabeth snapped back, and even though everyone was watching them, she launched another gumdrop at Percy. “If any of us is six, it’s you.”

Before that confrontation could devolve into another candy fight, Beryl clapped her hands. “I don’t like this unsportsmanlike behavior. Both pairs are disqualified.”

Jason wanted to object, because Piper and Percy really _had_ started it, but before he could get a word out, he was hit with another jellybean. A glance across the table revealed Piper glaring at him with her arms crossed, the ruins of her gingerbread house on the table in front of her, and a pouty little frown on her lips. 

Maybe he should have felt bad for ruining their house. He didn’t.

  


* * *

  


Percy felt a little bad for getting everyone disqualified from the gingerbread house competition. Only a little, though. It had kind of been worth it. 

The photographer came around after and took pictures of all the finished houses and the teams behind them, which Percy was sure would end up on the Governor’s Facebook page. Being eliminated meant they didn’t have to partake in the showmanship, and Percy had gotten a kick out of the unbridled rage in Annabeth’s eyes as she’d retaliated against his jellybean attacks with gumdrop projectiles. He was pretty sure he’d made himself an enemy for life, but, again, _worth it_.

In the end, their cousin Nico and his boyfriend Will came out on top, with an impressive and stable structure decorated in classic gingerbread house fashion with plenty of icing and candy. Honestly, it might have won even without Percy and Piper starting a candy war with Jason and Annabeth, if only because it looked so much like something straight out of a catalog. Nico _did_ have a degree in one of those artsy majors, so it kind of made sense they’d done so well.

The family was shuffled out of the dining room so the table could be cleared and then set again for dinner. Percy took the chance to run up to his room and hit the head. To his surprise, when he made his way back down, Piper was standing in the staging room chatting with Jason and Annabeth. He approached cautiously, comforted by the fact that they all appeared to be in good spirits, and draped an arm over Piper’s shoulder when he joined them.

“Perce,” Piper greeted with a smile, signaling to the other two with her hand, “I was just apologizing to Jason and Annabeth for starting that whole mess.”

“And I was just apologizing for making Piper drop your gingerbread house,” Jason added, wearing a tight lipped smile.

“Apology accepted,” Percy replied, flashing a toothy smile.

Annabeth raised her eyebrows, looking directly at Percy. “You don’t have anything else to say?”

“Not a thing,” Percy confirmed, knowing full well she was fishing for an apology from him, too. “Although, I did want to tell you – nice sweater.”

Taking a deep breath through clenched teeth, Annabeth turned to Jason. “I’m going to find Thalia. I had a couple questions for her about New Year’s.”

“I think I saw her and Rey head upstairs,” Jason told her, nodding. 

With a friendly smile to Piper, Annabeth excused herself from the group and headed toward the stairs. Percy caught himself turning to watch her walk away a second too late, and then didn’t know why he felt like he’d _caught_ himself doing anything at all. Watching someone walk away wasn’t weird behavior. At least, he didn’t think it was, but now he was questioning himself, trying to figure out if that was something he normally did or not. Definitely. He watched people walk away all the time.

“So,” Jason said, breaking the awkward tension Annabeth had created (Percy would not admit he had contributed), “are you two going to Thalia’s party? I know she invited everyone, but she told me a few people are skipping out.”

“Probably Triton and Kym ditching,” Percy replied, trying to keep the distaste out of his voice. The rest of the family didn’t need to know he could barely stand his half-siiblings. “We’re going to be there, though.

Stiff and polite, Jason smiled. “New Year’s and Halloween are Thalia’s two favorite holidays, so she goes pretty hard. It’s sure to be… a party.”

Percy had the distinct feeling he would enjoy anything Jason called _a party_ with such trepidation, but bit back all comments that came to mind on the matter. A furtive glance from Piper told him she knew exactly what he was thinking. He was saved from having to think of anything less incriminating to say by his aunt Beryl appearing in the doorway to announce the dining room was ready for everyone to seat for dinner.

This time Dinner did not end in Jason having an allergic reaction and being carted off in an ambulance. It actually ended up being a pretty boring meal. The food was good, if a little lavish for Percy’s tastes – he would have preferred that pineapple and barbecue sauce covered ham his mom had been preparing that morning over poached halibut and roasted beet salad. Percy and Piper were seated with his uncle Hades and Aunt Demeter, who made uninteresting conversation they were obviously trying to keep polite despite the snap judgments they’d made based on whatever Poseidon had told them. Somehow Percy survived.

“Do you want to steal some eggnog and sneak off after carols instead of sticking around for the stupid gift exchange thing?” Piper asked in a hushed tone after dinner. “Or maybe just a bottle of the rum they’re using in it.”

“You drinking a whole bottle of rum on your own sounds like a recipe for disaster,” Percy replied, which didn’t actually equate to a _no_. Disaster sounded like it might be a little fun, and Percy had asked Piper to suffer through these holidays with him specifically to piss his dad off. Wildly drunk Piper on Christmas Eve would absolutely accomplish that goal.

Piper pursed her lips in thought momentarily. “Maybe I don’t drink it all alone. We could invite a few other people to our exclusive mini-party.”

“Who are you thinking of?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow. Most of his cousins seemed invested in the family festivities and he couldn’t imagine them breaking off for some _actual_ fun, especially because too many of them ditching would become suspicious.

“Jason and Annabeth seem pretty cool,” she offered with a shrug. “It might be a good way to assure we’ve made amends for earlier, too.”

His eyes automatically scanned the room at the mention of their names, but he skipped right over Jason and settled on Annabeth. She stood on the other side of the living room where they were all soon going to be singing carols, smiling as she chatted casually with Nico, blonde curls bouncing in their ponytail any time she moved her head. Without realizing it, Percy had noticed she was always talking to someone in the family. He found it strange, if only because she didn’t strike him in general as a social butterfly or particularly personable during their few exchanges, but clearly she was making an effort. Annabeth must have loved Jason a lot to be putting in so much work.

“Nah, I’d rather it be just us if we’re doing that,” Percy decided, turning back to Piper, his mood suddenly souring.

“Life is going to be a lot more tolerable if we make friends with some of your cousins, Perce,” she said, her tone gentle and forgiving. “Most of them seem like okay people.”

Percy had always been a bit of a loner by nature, something Piper had been trying to mitigate since they were young by encouraging him to branch out. He’d maintained a solid group of friends over the years, but it was hard for him to welcome anyone new into the fold. Those two Piper had suggested sneaking off with had all his instincts screaming to proceed with caution. Jason seemed too perfect, too much like the judgmental members of the family who had framed Percy’s mom like some kind of gold digger for years. Annabeth, well, she just rubbed Percy the wrong way, unsettled him, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.

“Not them,” he replied, eyes unwittingly flashing back to Annabeth just in time to see her laugh at something Nico had said. _Definitely_ not them.

  


* * *

  


Highlights from the list of things Jason would have preferred to singing carols by the fire with his family just so a photographer could snap phony, staged pictures – drinking room temperature coffee; needing to sneeze and not being able to; walking around with sand in uncomfortable places; wet shoes; and spending another night in the ER after an allergic reaction to fucking celery. Thinking through this list, which grew longer with every song his mother led the group in singing, at least made the hour a little more tolerable. The kids seemed to enjoy it for about ten minutes, and then they started to get restless and Jason figured no one was actually having _fun_ after that.

Objectively, Jason thought these activities would probably be really great. His problem stemmed from his immense discomfort around so many people he barely knew, and so few people he actually liked. A lazy evening singing karaoke style carols with Annabeth, Thalia and Reyna, Leo and a few other friends from work, might have been a blast. Plastering a fake smile on his face and posing for a camera ruined the experience.

Things became a little more tolerable when everyone gathered around to have Zeus read _The Night Before Christmas_ to them. It was more tolerable because Jason was able to sit toward the back with Annabeth and be out of the shot for pictures. The fact that the reading was recorded to be uploaded online annoyed him, though. It was just another insincere performance.

By the time the kids were shuffled away to get ready for bed and the eggnog was brought out, Jason needed that first drink bad.

“You hate eggnog,” Annabeth said after Jason had downed his first cup and served himself a second out of one of the punch bowls that had been brought out. She was right, he did hate it. Thankfully he had chugged the drink so fast he didn’t even taste it, and he intended to make just as quick work of his second cup. 

“It’s just been a day,” Jason replied, wrinkling his nose at the yellow liquid in his hand. He definitely would have preferred a few swigs of rum on its own to get a buzz, but he could make due.

“Stop being such a Grinch. You’d actually like a lot of these people if you took a little time to get to know them,” she said, pouring herself a drink as well, but not of eggnog. Jason’s mom had prepared hot chocolate for anyone who didn’t want to drink and Annabeth had stopped drinking alcohol a couple years before. “Nico designs _Mythomagic_ cards, you know. He and Frank have a group that gets together to play once a week in the city.”

Annabeth was as much an introvert as Jason, thriving when she could be in the quiet of her own home without many (or any) people around and avoiding large groups at all costs. Unlike Jason, though, she was still good at socializing when the need arose. She could get to know a person quickly because she had a knack for making others feel at ease and was good at making small talk. People were intimidated by her at first, and rightfully so, but tended to like her once they got to know her. The opposite seemed to be true for Jason – people only liked him so long as their relationship stayed shallow.

Jason took his second cop of eggnog like a shot and poured himself a third before escaping from the drink table to keep from being overheard. “I haven’t played _Mythomagic_ since high school.”

“And yet you still have all your cards,” Annabeth pointed out, eyebrows raised.

“They’re sentimental.”

“Okay, so you don’t join their nerd group,” she said, with a roll of her eyes and an exhausted sigh. “I’m just saying – you probably have a lot in common with them and just don’t realize it because you refuse to get to know them. Try talking to people. Let loose a little.”

She didn’t give him a chance to object again, abandoning him to go do more of her expert mingling.

He knew Annabeth was right, and whether it was the eggnog impacting his inhibitions or just his general desire to better himself, he started scanning the room to decide who he might try getting to know first. Based on what Annabeth had told him, Nico seemed like a good place to start, but the guy was trying to shrink back into a corner of the room. No, Jason doubted _that_ cousin was in the mood for an awkward get-to-know-you conversation. Jason’s eyes continued to scan the room, passing over everyone until they landed on Piper.

Something made him want to go over there, and he might have if Annabeth hadn’t beaten him to the punch. The two women stood in the open doorway between family room and hallway, each of them leaned on opposite door jams. Their earlier, post candy fight, congeniality remained. Annabeth spoke and Piper wore a smile that Jason thought went beyond simple politeness. She was enjoying the conversation. Both of them were. Jason wanted to enjoy a conversation with them, too.

“Hey, Jace,” Thalia called, loudly, from across the room. He tensed at her tone, recognizing the teasing, with a dangerous hint of barely contained laughter, instantly. When Jason looked to his sister, along with pretty much everyone else in the room, she pointed toward Annabeth. “Your _girlfriend_ is under the mistletoe. Just gonna let her go unkissed?”

Every eye looked then to Annabeth, and Jason’s eyes flickered up to the door frame, above Annabeth’s head. Technically the plant hung directly in the middle of Annabeth and Piper, but Jason knew Thalia’s ulterior motive gave her no reason to also call Percy out. Over the month since Thanksgiving, Thalia had continued to express her distaste for the little farce he and Annabeth were putting on, and he had no doubt she hoped to see it all fall apart. It would look painfully suspicious if Jason refused to kiss the woman he was supposedly dating.

There was no chance for Jason to react, though. In a split second Annabeth made eye contact with Piper, and Piper leaned in to do the kissing. The whole room watched, seconds dragging on so long they felt like full hours, as Annabeth tensed and then relaxed, Piper’s hands on her face, until they finally pulled apart and broke into warm, light laughter. 

“Merry Christmas,” Piper said, loud enough to carry across the room.

A deep blush crept across Annabeth’s features, though Jason couldn’t be sure whether it was from the kiss itself or the subsequent attention. “Merry Christmas, indeed.”

  


* * *

  


“I can’t believe you _kissed her_ ,” Percy said, trying his best to keep his voice down so it wouldn’t carry through the walls, when he and Piper finally made their way up to his room for the night. “In front of literally everyone, too.”

Piper rolled her eyes, throwing back the covers on their bed. “Oh my God, Perce, it was just a kiss. We’re all grown ups here. She even thought it was funny.”

“She’s Jason’s girlfriend,” he reminded his best friend, growing more annoyed by the second.

He’d seen the kiss coming before Piper even started to move in. The flicker of a sparkle in Piper’s eye had given her away. Percy had watched with dejected horror as the two had kissed, and, again, hadn’t been surprised when it lasted longer than a simple, playful peck. It had been a proper kiss, with tenderly kneading lips and all. After, he’d looked to Jason and discovered his cousin with mouth agape, eyes narrowed into a disapproving glare. Percy didn’t want to get buddy-buddy with that particular cousin, but he also didn’t want to make the guy mad.

“Yeah,” Piper agreed, clearly not seeing the issue, “and they all think I’m _your_ girlfriend. Again, we’re all grown ups, Perce. You’re the only one who’s upset.”

“Jason seemed pretty upset,” Percy argued, throwing himself down into bed in frustration.

“I asked Annabeth if she thought it would bother him after and she told me it was fine,” she replied, waving Percy’s concern off yet again as she climbed in on the other side of the bed.

All through the last phase of the party, Percy had been stewing in his annoyance over that kiss. The family had circled around once Triton, Kym and their spouses returned from putting their kids to bed for the night and gone through the extensive process of a white elephant gift exchange. Percy had been so distracted flashing angry looks in Piper’s direction that he’d barely paid any attention, and in the end he’d wound up with a _Master Crapsman_ – a gift pack of two kinds of _Poo-Pouri_. Now his shit would smell like lavender or lemon. Great.

“Do you like her?” The question came out more accusatory than Percy intended it, but he didn’t take it back, instead resuming his earlier glaring. “You two were pretty chummy all night.”

“Because I can’t be friends with a girl?” Piper demanded in return, tone growing more frustrated by the second.

“Not a hot one,” he replied, matching her tone and feeling his jaw tense.

Two beats of silence followed, and when Piper spoke again, her voice had changed, softened. “You think she’s hot?”

“No,” Percy said quickly. “I mean, like, she’s not bad looking. I could see how _you_ would think she was hot.”

“You do,” Piper pressed, her earlier grimace turned into a dropped jaw smile. She gave Percy’s shoulder a gentle shove. “You think your cousin’s girlfriend is _hot_. That’s the real reason you’re mad, isn’t it? You want to kiss her yourself.”

“Absolutely not,” he said, trying to put an edge to the words in hopes of ending the discussion there. “I just don’t want to cause problems with Jason.”

Percy refused to look at her, but he could feel Piper’s eyes on him and sense her reading his mind. Whatever she found there, he couldn’t be sure, but she scooted down in bed to get comfortable. “Well, maybe I do like her.”

“Off limits,” he reminded her.

“You said your cousins were off limits,” she objected, her voice airy and taunting. “That doesn’t include their significant others.”

Technically, that was true, and he cursed himself for not having been more specific. “Well, I’m saying it now – Annabeth is off limits.”

“Because you think she’s hot,” Piper continued to tease.

“Goodnight, Piper,” Percy said, reaching for his bedside lamp to turn it off. They were not going to keep this up. He did not think his cousin’s girlfriend was hot.

Even after Piper turned the other lap off, even after Percy heard the quiet drone of familiar snores, he lay in bed awake, unable to sleep. His mind kept circling back to Annabeth’s angry glare when Percy had walked out in the same sweater as her, the flash of rage in her gray eyes when she’d lobbed that first gumdrop at him, the corners of her lips threatening to break into a smile with each exchanged piece of candy, her childish declaration of _they started it_ , and the faint glow of a blush on her cheeks after Piper had kissed her. He definitely didn’t think she was hot. He _couldn’t_ think she was hot.

That didn’t stop him from being excited to see her again in the morning, and it didn’t stop her from being all he could think about until he finally fell asleep.

  


* * *

  


Jason was not upset. He wasn’t. He refused to even entertain the possibility that he was angry about that kiss under the mistletoe. So his lips had been set into a grimace all night, and when he and Annabeth had finally headed upstairs for the night he’d been gruff and stomped around their room while they both got changed and settled. Neither of those things meant anything, because there should have been no reason for the kiss to upset him.

“Just say whatever is on your mind and be done with it,” Annabeth finally demanded, when he’d thrown himself into bed like a six year old in the midst of a tantrum.

Saying it aloud would be even stupider than thinking it, but Jason knew Annabeth well enough to be sure she wouldn’t drop it if he tried to shrug her off. There would be no running from this stupidity. “You kissed her.”

“ _That’s_ what you’re mad about?” Annabeth asked, the disbelief in her voice practically palpable. “First of all, she kissed me, and second of all – why in the world does me kissing someone make you mad?”

There were a few reasons he had come up with over the course of the hours that had passed since that kiss and he had no idea which of them was most ridiculous. Part of him was jealous because he, admittedly, thought Piper was kind of cute. No matter how immature it sounded, even in his own mind, seeing Annabeth kiss a girl he thought was cute felt like crap. Another part of him worried the kiss would make _Percy_ mad and potentially cause some kind of issue between them. Jason didn’t want any family drama. For all he knew, Percy had no sense of humor, or was a super jealous boyfriend, or something else along those lines.

More than either of those issues, though, there was one glaring, ridiculous thing he took issue with. “You’re supposed to be my girlfriend,” he admitted, unable to meet her eye as he made the confession.

“But I’m not,” she replied, saying the words slowly, cautiously, as if they might set him off.

“Yeah,” Jason agreed, because he knew that. Annabeth _not_ being his girlfriend wasn’t his problem. “No one else knows that, though. Now everyone thinks my girlfriend kissed someone else on Christmas Eve.”

“Again,” Annabeth said, her voice becoming brittle under the weight of her barely restrained frustration, “ _she_ kissed _me_. Everyone knew it was a joke, Jason. If anything, I figured you’d be thanking Piper for saving you from having to kiss me yourself after Thalia put you on the spot like that.”

Venturing a glance over at Annabeth where she sat, legs crossed on the chair in front of the small vanity table in their room, Jason was surprised to see a hint of hurt hidden behind the more obvious frustration in her expression. “I didn’t need to be saved.”

“You sure looked like you were about to be sick over it,” she mumbled, only barely loud enough for Jason to make out, which he knew from experience meant she wanted him to hear it but didn’t want him to _think_ she wanted him to hear it. A second later, at a normal volume, she continued, “I know we’re not actually dating, but you don’t have to act so disgusted by the thought of kissing me.”

“I’m not disgusted by the thought of kissing you,” he insisted, surprised by her becoming so defensive.

“Then do it,” Annabeth replied, tilting her head to one side and staring him down in a silent challenge. “Kiss me. Right now.”

Taken aback, Jason gaped at her for several seconds before he could formulate a very eloquent response of, “No.”

“Everyone is going to think it’s weird if you don’t kiss me on New Year’s,” she argued, eyebrows raised, tone oozing an aggression that only served to further confuse him. “This whole pretending to date thing was your idea. You should have realized you’d have to at some point.”

Jason had not realized as much. Public displays of affection had never really been his thing, even in the most passionate of his former relationships. His parents knew not to expect physical displays from him, and Thalia knew the truth about his relationship with Annabeth – not that knowing the truth had stopped her from being an ass about it earlier. He wasn’t even sure he’d seen many of his cousins and their significant others bothering to kiss each other in the middle of celebrations. Not kissing Annabeth in front of everyone didn’t seem like such a strange thing.

As for New Year’s, well, Jason figured they could find a way out of it. He could accidentally end up in the bathroom when the clock struck midnight, or Annabeth could suddenly get a call she needed to take in another room. If anything, the lack of physical connection between them might even make it that much more believable when they inevitably broke up in a few weeks.

No, he would not be kissing his best friend.

A little voice in the back of his head made him hesitate, though. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea, just doing it once, just _trying_ it. Annabeth fit into his life so neatly. Their two nights with his family had proven as much. His parents were obviously in love with her and Thalia adored Annabeth, quite possibly even more than Jason. She was pretty, objectively more attractive than most girls Jason had dated over the years. Jason felt good when he was around her, even if sometimes she drove him absolutely up the wall. They already knew each other inside and out, and had tons of things in common. There was no denying he could do a lot worse, and had done before.

“We’ll figure out New Year’s when we get there,” Jason replied instead, shrugging with feigned indifference and ignoring that nagging voice in his head.

“That’s what I thought,” Annabeth said, breathing a quiet sigh and getting up to turn off the overhead light in their room.

Neither of them bothered to say goodnight, just crawling under the covers and clicking off their bedside lamps. Jason didn’t know what to make of her silence. Even worse, he didn’t know what to make of his own jumbled thoughts.

One night down, two more to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! i kind of spaced, but i'd meant to leave this note on the first chapter. better late than never?
> 
> this fic will be updated on (american) holidays and a few other special occasions, usually with longish chapters to make the wait between them worth it. most of the time there will be a chapter every month, and i'll make sure to leave a note at the end of each one to let you know when to expect the next update. i post about my process on [twitter](https://twitter.com/waddled) often if you're at all interested. while i don't really post updates there, i also have [tumblr](https://couvers.tumblr.com/) if that's more your speed or you want to shoot an ask about anything.
> 
> originally this chapter was going to just be christmas, but it turned out super long, so i decided to split it into a christmas eve chapter and a rest of the weekend chapter! i'm dropping this chapter tonight and then i'll drop the second half on the 26th (not doing actual christmas day so i can spend it celebrating myself). i'll see you all again in a few days, but until then, i hope you enjoyed this chapter. merry christmas and happy holidays! 💕


	3. Christmas

“It’s Christmas!”

Those were the first words Percy registered Christmas morning, along with Piper shaking him violently beside him in bed. He blinked his eyes open slowly, recoiling as he felt the sticky and cold patch of drool that had puddled on his pillow. Brain refusing to actually start working, all he could do was stare at her in disbelief and wipe at the trail of slobber from the corner of his mouth to his chin.

Despite Piper usually being even worse about oversleeping than he was, it seemed like she’d already been up for at least a few minutes. Her face was freshly washed, long hair tamed in a smooth braid down one shoulder, and she smiled down at him from ear to ear. Giving him a few more shoves in an attempt to get him up faster, Piper repeated, “Percy, it’s Christmas. Wake _up_. I want you to open your present.”

“I want to _sleep_ ,” he complained, though he forced himself to sit up. “And I thought we agreed not to get each other anything this year.”

“We did,” she confirmed with a nod and not a hint of shame. “But I know you got me something anyway, too.”

That was a pretty bold assumption, but he had to smile. She was right. Percy had suggested they not spend any money on each other this year because he knew how tight things were for her financially. There were other people, more important than him, for her to be spending what little money she had to spare on. He, on the other hand, wasn’t so hard up. Hell would freeze over before he went a single year without giving Piper at least once present.

“Okay, but _you_ weren’t supposed to get _me_ anything,” he argued, feeling a little more awake in response to his amusement.

Piper somehow managed to grin a little wider. “Yeah, that was never happening.”

Wiggling his fingers at her, Percy continued to blink drowsily, but voiced no more complaints. “Well, give it here, then. Let’s see how mad I’m going to be at you today.”

“I promise it’s nothing big,” she assured him, handing the box over. The tone of her voice made Percy think she didn’t enjoy being able to say that, but he was thankful she hadn’t done anything crazy for him.

Neatly wrapped in metallic paper with holly printed all over it, the box was just small enough for Percy to hold in one hand. It wasn’t particularly heavy, which added to the assurance Piper had offered about it not being anything particularly big. He spent about two more seconds studying it before finally ripping into it at top speeds. The cardboard box under the paper was unmarked and he popped open the scotch tape holding it closed easily. Unfortunately, opening the box proved useless. Another, smaller box was nestled inside it, wrapped in the same paper.

“Seriously?” he asked, looking up at Piper and raising an eyebrow. “You really did this?”

“I really did,” Piper confirmed, her giddiness overflowing.

Two more layers of boxes stood between Percy and his actual gift, which could have been worse, but he still complained about as if it had been the greatest inconvenience in his entire life. Every complaint only added to the excitement Piper exhibited, so he didn’t feel any shame in hamming it up. In the end, though, when he finally pulled his real gift out of the smallest box, all Percy’s usual sarcasm died on his tongue.

It was a set of six custom coasters. Percy didn’t really use or care about coasters, of course, but he had a feeling Piper intended them to be more for decoration than function, anyway. The custom part was what left him speechless. Each one was a repurposed copy of a CD, old albums that had been some of his and Piper's favorites over the years, the ones they had listened to on repeat for hours on end. He shouldn’t have been surprised – Piper had always been the best at gift giving, both when she’d had plenty of money to blow and after her dad had gone broke – but her thoughtfulness and the wave of nostalgia those CDs inspired threatened to make him misty eyed.

“I made them myself,” Piper told him, a hint of timidity in her voice. “They didn’t turn out as smoothly as I was hoping, but I figure we’ll never use them as actual coasters, anyway, so it doesn’t matter if they’re a little lumpy.”

“Well, shit,” Percy said, his voice just as soft as hers, as he gazed at the CD faces that were so familiar, and yet strange to be looking at again after so many years. He hadn’t even touched his collection of CDs for ages. There simply wasn’t a need for them anymore. “I can’t give you your present now. It sucks compared to this, so you’re out of luck.”

“Nope. You have to. Gimme,” she insisted, holding her hands out.

Percy really did feel stupid about what he’d gotten her now, but he sighed and set the coasters aside so he could crawl out of bed and collect Piper’s gift from his suitcase. The box he offered her was smaller than even the smallest of the collection she’d put together for him, but Piper didn’t seem at all disappointed by its size. If anything, she turned curious over what it might contain, her lips pursing and eyes narrowing.

Just like Percy, Piper wasted no time shredding the layer of red and white striped paper. Inside was another unmarked box, this one smooth and white. Piper popped the top off of it and then stared at its contents in silence, her mouth hanging open. He knew it. She was disappointed.

“It’s… It’s a microSD card,” she observed, working very hard not to look like she absolutely hated what she was seeing by keeping her voice completely even.

“It is,” Percy agreed, an awkward and tense smile on his face. “It’s five hundred and twelve gigabites. That’s like… the second biggest size they come in. You know, for your camera.”

In a flash, Piper’s smile had returned and she broke into a fit of giggles, falling over sideways on the bed and taking the tiny box with her. “I love you so much, Perce. Thank you. It’s perfect.”

“You hate it,” he argued, because he could tell she was hoping for something more. In hindsight, giving her a Christmas present to use at her job was kind of stupid. Piper could buy work stuff for herself if and when she needed it.

Piper shook her head emphatically, but she couldn’t stop laughing, still collapsed down on the bed. “No, I really love it, and I’ve been saying for like two months how much I need a new one. I was just surprised because it looked like a jewelry box or something and I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Uhuh,” Percy replied, not buying it for one second. At least she was laughing and not crying – on her first birthday after her dad had lost basically everything, Percy had made the mistake of getting her a cool reusable water bottle he’d thought she would love. That had ended in tears, mostly because she was still dealing with all the stress that had put on her, but also kind of just because a water bottle was a lame present. Laughing was at least better than tears. “I’m hungry. Let’s go get breakfast so I can forget how mortified I am right now.”

  


* * *

  


Morning came too soon and _loudly_.

Jason was nursing a slight hangover as he made his way downstairs, both from the eggnog the night before and his weird argument with Annabeth, the excited screams and cheers of his second cousins filling the entire house and leaving his head throbbing. Most of the adults were already awake as well, milling around the living room where dozens of presents had been delivered under the tree overnight. The presents probably would have been enough to have the kids going crazy, but Jason discovered something else setting them off when he walked into the family room – his dad had dressed up as Santa.

Their photographer hovered around, but Jason still managed to find a little joy in watching the kids rip open their gifts and scream with excitement at everything Zeus said and did. He wasn’t the only one enjoying the show, either. Annabeth had already been up when the sounds of celebration woke Jason, and she sat on a sofa in the living room with a mug of coffee in her hands, watching wrapping paper fly with a subdued smile on her lips. He decided to join her there, even though most of his cousins were in the dining room digging into the breakfast buffet prepared for them.

“Imagining little ones of your own?” Beryl asked, appearing behind Annabeth on the couch.

Annabeth was momentarily startled and Jason couldn’t help rolling his eyes at his mother’s obvious prying, but instead of brushing the question off or joining in Jason’s annoyance, Annabeth nodded. “I guess I was.”

“I’m sure you won’t have to wait much longer, Sweetie,” Beryl replied, patting Annabeth’s shoulder gently. The words were very clearly directed at Jason, though. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The real miracle was the fact they’d made it through the whole previous evening without his mother making some offhand comment about grandkids.

“You don’t have to indulge her,” Jason said in a whisper, once Beryl had moved on to give the kids her attention.

“I wasn’t indulging her. I really had been thinking about what it would be like to have my own,” Annabeth said, not even paying Jason a glance as she focused on the scene playing out before them and sipped her coffee.

It was Jason’s turn to be startled and he focused his attention on Annabeth in confusion. “Since when do you think about having kids?”

She shrugged, taking another sip before answering. “I’m almost thirty. Is it so weird for it to be on my mind?”

“No,” Jason said quickly, almost defensively. The thought was more or less always on his mind, but he had never been sure whether that was because he genuinely wanted to start a family soon or just because his parents were constantly on him about it. “I guess I just didn’t picture you as the type.”

“ _The type_?” Annabeth asked, finally turning to look at him, her eyebrows drawn together.

“You know, to be concerned about kids and a family or whatever,” he replied, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of his dad and second cousins. “I’ve always thought of you as more career and goal oriented.”

Several beats of silence passed between them as hurt flashed across Annabeth’s face. “Fuck off, Jason,” she finally muttered under her breath. Before Jason could apologize or ask what he’d said wrong, she got to her feet and exited the living room.

  


* * *

  


All the ways Christmas Eve dinner failed, breakfast Christmas morning made up for. Percy piled scrambled eggs, ham, bacon, sausage, pancakes and toast onto his plate, grabbed a cup of hot chocolate, and settled down to stuff his face. Piper joined him at the dining table, but the early hour combined with her minor eggnog hangover meant she had no appetite. She opted to just pick at some toast and nurse a cup of coffee.

Sounds of the kids ripping open their presents filtered in through open doors, filling the dining room with the kind of joy unique to Christmas morning. Percy wondered what his parents, Estelle and Grover were up to, if they were even awake yet. He’d left everyone’s presents there and eagerly awaited the texts from his mom once everything had been opened. Not being there to see their reactions himself kind of sucked, but he refused to linger on that negativity.

Percy had only just gotten started on his piled up plate when Annabeth sat down next to Piper with some breakfast and a coffee mug of her own. Sleep had managed to wipe Percy’s conversation with Piper the night before out of his mind until that point, but it all came rushing back when Annabeth gave a tight smile in greeting. He let Piper take the reigns of conversation, focusing on shoveling food into his mouth and trying to imagine what the morning currently looked like back home instead of listening to whatever the girls were saying.

“Uncle Percy!” The scream cut through the white noise of chatter over breakfast and Percy turned just in time to see his oldest niece shoot across the dining room and launch herself into his arms. “Thank you so much for my present! It’s my _favorite_!”

“I’m sure your parents and Grandpa got you better things than I did,” Percy replied, barely able to choke out the words as his niece’s tiny arms threatened to crush his trachea. 

Despite his immense dislike of Triton and Kym, Percy still liked picking out small gifts for his nieces and nephews on their birthdays and Christmas. The kids weren’t at fault for their parents being assholes. He didn’t have much money to spend on them, either, with his minimal teacher’s salary, but Percy had learned a long time ago that thought and time could make a few dollars go a hell of a long way. Clearly, this Christmas that belief had held especially true.

This niece, named Ariel, was Triton’s oldest daughter, just turned seven two months prior, and easily Percy’s favorite. He shouldn’t have had favorites, but the older she got, the more she reminded him of himself. Ariel’s bright green eyes and pitch black hair were shared among almost all Poseidon’s children and grandchildren. It was the fact that her hair was always a little matted, and that she always had dirt under her nails, and that she screamed as she ran through dining rooms without concern for her surroundings that reminded Percy of himself. Percy honestly wished he could see her more often, and that seeing her didn’t also have to include seeing his half-brother.

Ariel shook her head, leaning back enough to flash him a toothy grin – one of her front teeth had fallen out a few days before Christmas and it made her smile that much more infectious. “Daddy said it would be too messy, but I wanted it _so bad_. I’m going to dig up _dinosaurs_.”

“You had asked for it?” Percy asked, his smile only growing. Ariel nodded enthusiastically. “And your dad said you couldn’t have it?” She nodded again. 

It had not been Percy’s intention to undermine his brother with Ariel’s gift. He’d picked out the _Mega Fossil Dig Kit_ because he knew she was super into dinosaurs at the moment, the kit was exactly the kind of thing he would have loved to get his hands dirty with at her age, and it had been neatly within his budget. This new development definitely added to his satisfaction, though, and Percy turned to smile proudly at Piper. While glancing over, he caught sight of Annabeth, watching him with slightly narrowed eyes as she pushed some eggs around on her plate. He tried to ignore the glare, and the way his heart rate ticked up gently, and also the fact that her hair had started to slip out of her loose and lopsided bun. Ignoring it was hard.

“If your dad won’t let you play with it, let me know,” Percy said, turning back to Ariel. 

“Can we play with it today?” she asked, practically wiggling with excitement. Even better than giving her something that would piss his half-brother off, Percy’s heart swelled with pride at his gift being so good she wanted to play with it so soon, above everything else she’d been given.

“We absolutely can and will play with it today,” he confirmed with a nod. Percy’s sister-in-law appeared in the dining room doorway at that moment and he knew from the displeased purse of her lips that she was looking for her daughter, so he ruffled Ariel’s hair and flashed her a grin. “Your mom is looking for you right now, though. I’ll make sure to find you later, okay?”

“Okay,” Ariel agreed, and smacked a quick kiss on his cheek before climbing down from his lap and rushing off to her waiting mother.

When Percy returned to his meal, he could feel two pairs of eyes on him. “What?” he asked with a mouthful of pancake.

“Look at you,” Piper said, shaking her head, playfully disgusted. “You just eat it up.”

He glanced down at his plate and then looked back at her, purposefully avoiding Annabeth’s gaze. “The pancakes?”

“That your niece likes you so much more than your brother,” Piper replied, the poorly feigned mask disgust already cracking.

“I can’t help that she has good taste,” Percy said, after taking a drink of hot chocolate to wash down his food. “Someone else in this family was bound to have some eventually.”

“And which member of the family had good taste before her?” Annabeth asked, her tone dry and hard to discern. When Percy looked at her, she’d brought her mug to her lips, hiding them, her eyes still hard and narrowed.

Percy refused to let her intimidate him. “Me, obviously.”

Eyebrows raising, Annabeth tilted her head toward Piper. “Is that true? Does he have good taste?”

“He does,” Piper answered, her eyes lingering on Annabeth for several seconds before she sent a pointed look in Percy’s direction, “but I don’t think it’s quite fair of him to say he’s the _only_ one. There are one or two cousins I think he’d agree have pretty decent taste.”

“Nope,” he said, turning his full attention back to his plate and actively ignoring the implication of Piper’s expression and words. “It’s definitely only me.”

  


* * *

  


Back up in their room, Jason didn’t know what to say to Annabeth. She’d avoided him during the rest of breakfast, although he hadn’t actively tried to approach her. Since coming up, she’d remained silent, taking a quick shower and getting dressed for a day out in the snow with his family. This happened between them sometimes – Jason would say something that set her off and Annabeth would give him the cold shoulder until either she cooled down or he worked up the sense to set his pride aside and apologize. They were both a little too stubborn and emotionally stunted for their own good.

Jason didn’t really need to set any pride aside this time. He wanted to apologize, but he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d said wrong. Not once, in all the years they’d been friends, had Annabeth ever expressed a desire to have kids. She had always talked about her goals. Her current five year plan was so familiar to him he could recite it if she asked. That plan included making junior partner at their firm and landing a project in the city. It did not include getting married or having kids. If those were things she wanted, he would have thought she’d at least mention them in her plans.

Since he didn’t know how to bring the subject up without making things worse, Jason decided to try mending fences another way. After she’d tied up her hair and seemed ready to head off, he pulled out her Christmas present and sat down on the foot of their shared bed. “Merry Christmas,” he said cautiously, holding the small, neatly wrapped box out to her.

Annabeth studied him, her lips pinched and her gray eyes wary. “What is it?”

“It’s not going to bite you,” Jason replied, unable to keep the smile off his lips. “Just open it.”

“You didn’t bring anything for the white elephant exchange, but you did _this_?” she asked, the annoyance in her voice plainly forced. When she took the gift from him, the motion was gentle.

“Yes, I forgot about the stupid thing my mom mentioned like twice and remembered to get a present for my best friend,” he answered dryly. “That’s a pretty normal mistake to make, Annabeth.”

“Shut up,” she told him with a roll of her eyes and not an ounce of malice. Annabeth took a seat beside him, staring for a few more seconds at the box before she began to carefully unwrap. Her fingernail slid under the tape to keep from ripping the paper. Jason had seen Annabeth practically rip an envelope in half to get at what awaited inside a tenth of a second faster, she was so impatient, but when it came to gifts, she always took her time.

It had taken him a while to understand why she handled gifts so reverently. On her seventeenth birthday, Jason had finally understood. All Annabeth’s dad had ever sent her was a card with a check tucked inside. Her mom had never been home, off on the campaign trail with Jason’s dad or doing any number of other work related things, and hadn’t even bothered with a card, just told Annabeth to get whatever she wanted with her credit card. Actual, physical gifts for Annabeth were rare and meaningful, which was why he wouldn’t have forgotten her Christmas present even if the world had been ending.

He watched her finally peel away the wrapping paper with bated breath, hoping she would like what he’d prepared. This year Jason had cut it close trying to figure out what to get Annabeth, and he’d second guessed himself several times. Thankfully, when she popped the white gift box open, she instantly broke into a smile.

“Seriously?” she asked, though her smile continued to widen, as she picked up the rechargeable hand warmer to show it to him. The circular gadget was bright yellow and had a smiley faced sunshine on it.

“All year you’ve done nothing but complain about how cold the office always is, and how you can’t draw when your hands are frozen,” he explained, but he knew he didn’t actually need to. “You literally wore gloves because the air conditioning was too high over the summer. It was disgusting. And annoying.”

“I’m so sorry my suffering _annoyed_ you,” Annabeth replied, setting the hand warmer back in the tissue paper it had been packed in. Without another word she got back up and went over to the bag she’d packed for the weekend to pull out a gift of her own. She held the box out to him silently and Jason accepted it just as wordlessly.

Never one to be as careful as Annabeth with gifts, Jason ripped right into the paper, and a few seconds later he was looking at the box for a back brace. It was his turn to laugh over the gift, eyebrows raised as he looked at her. “Because I’ve been complaining about my back.”

“Is it sad that we both got each other Christmas presents to use at work?” she asked, wincing as she looked at the box in Jason’s hands and then the warmer in her own.

“It’s a little sad, yeah,” he confirmed, but that didn’t change the fact that her gift was perfect.

“But it has NASA grade memory foam,” Annabeth told him, pointing to the little blurb on the box that advertised that very thing. “And it comes with this insert thing you can use for heat or ice therapy. This is like, the Rolls-Royce of back braces. Top of the line. I did a lot of research before I bought it.”

“Top of the line sadness,” Jason teased, nudging her with his shoulder.

Hearing her laugh was a relief after their tense confrontation, but what she said next still surprised him. “I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have gotten so upset with you.”

“No,” he told her quickly, shaking his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t… That I never realized…”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Annabeth assured him, jumping back up to her feet and heading toward her bag again to stuff her hand warmer inside. As she continued to speak, the words came out rushed, forced and awkward. “Like I said, I overreacted. No big deal. I’m going to head downstairs now. See you later.”

Jason’s instincts told him her insistent denial meant it _was_ a big deal, but, yet again, Annabeth didn’t let him get another word in. She grabbed her gloves and jacket, flashed him a tight smile, and disappeared out the door.

  


* * *

  


“We’re playing a classic game of _Capture the Flag,_ ” Thalia declared.

Overnight the ground had been covered in close to six inches of snow, turning the massive grounds that passed as a backyard at Zeus’s governor’s mansion into a winter wonderland. Most of the cousins and their significant others had assembled at Thalia’s invitation. The notable exceptions were Triton and Kym, who Percy figured either had to deal with their kids or just thought they were too good for such juvenile activities, and Piper and Jason. Piper had passed because, even though she’d lived in New York the better part of her life, she insisted she _didn’t do snow_. Percy had no idea why Jason had opted out, but he found it more curious that Annabeth had opted in despite Jason’s absence.

“Teams are easy,” Thalia continued from the front of the group, her voice carrying easily over the small crowd to where Percy stood at the back. “The cousins will be one team, our lovers the other.”

“Ew, did you just call us your _lovers_?” Reyna shot back.

“I did,” Thalia replied with a grin. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Kick your ass, is what we’re going to do,” Reyna answered, and whoops and hollers went up from the others assigned to the _lovers_ team.

A few more instructions on flag placement and general rules were given – they were mixing in a neat little game of snowball tag, where anyone pegged with a snowball had to go to a designated jail space for five minutes – and then the teams of six went their separate ways to hide their flags and plan their attacks.

“Bianca, Hazel and I will take offense,” Thalia said when their group had secured their flag and huddled up to discuss battle strategy. “Percy, Nico, Meg – the three of you stick back and defend the flag. We can’t be within ten feet of it once my dad blows the whistle to start the game, but you can dig some snow trenches around the perimeter and make sure to peg anyone who comes by with snowballs.”

“Why are you three on offense?” Percy asked, looking at the three girls in question with an eyebrow raised.

Of the cousins assembled, Percy definitely had the greatest physical advantage – he was tallest and probably in the best shape, considering his literal job had him spending most of his days exercising. Countless games of dodgeball with merciless middle schoolers had prepared him well for whatever the other team could throw at him. Leaving him to just sit around in case someone showed up seemed a waste of their best resource.

“Smaller targets,” Thalia answered, pointing specifically at Hazel, the smallest of them. “Also, they’ll expect us to send you and probably have some kind of plan in place for it. When three tiny girls attack, they won’t know what to do.”

“Makes sense,” Meg agreed. Her entire face had already turned red, though whether it was from the nip of the cold air or the massive yellow scarf wrapped around her neck overheating her, Percy didn’t know. The people especially bundled up were definitely going to get uncomfortably hot running around.

The other girls all nodded, but Nico appeared just as dissatisfied with the plan as Percy was. “I think it would be better to work in a team of four,” he offered, speaking to his sisters rather than Thalia. “That way, once we locate their flag, we can split into two groups of two and hit them from both sides at the same time.”

“I actually like that idea more, too,” Hazel said, nudging Nico with her shoulder and then looking over at their defacto leader, Thalia. “What do you think?”

Thalia considered it for several seconds and the nodded. “We’ll take Meg too, then. Nico and Percy stay here with the flag.”

Taking _Meg_ as their fourth had definitely not been what Percy would have suggested, and Nico’s subtle smile turned instantly into a disapproving frown. The guys were outnumbered, though. When the whistle blew a minute later, the four girls scattered into the trees and disappeared to begin searching for the other team’s flag, and Percy and Nico were left alone to sit and hope some action came to them.

Around them, the grounds had fallen eerily silent, the strange absence of even natural sounds that always accompanied heavy snows. Percy kicked at the snow beneath his feet, loose powder that would be perfect for a little sledding on a half decent hill. Maybe, if the snow stuck around, he’d be able to convince Triton and Kym to let him take the older kids out later in the weekend to do just that, build some snowmen, kill a few extra hours away from all the pomp and circumstance.

“Are you going to dig a trench?” Nico asked, several minutes into their standing around. 

“Fuck no,” Percy replied, glancing up at his companion. “You?”

Nico’s lip curled upward. “No. What’s the point of this dumb game if all we get to do is stand around in the cold?”

“Maybe the girls are better optics for the photographers or something,” Percy suggested, still kicking at the snow. He was only half joking with the idea. Zeus and Beryl were up by the house refereeing the game, and their photographer was hard at work again capturing the precious family memories to plaster all over the Governor’s social media accounts.

“Do you think this shit will get better or worse if Uncle Zeus actually ends up president?” Nico asked, the annoyance in his voice making a smile pull at Percy’s lips. Another cousin finding this whole charade perverse did make Percy feel a little better.

Percy shrugged, his breath clouding as he let out a heavy sigh. “Probably worse, to be honest. We’d all probably have to make the trip down to DC all the time or something.”

“God, I hate DC,” Nico groaned.

Not having spent any time with his cousins until well into adulthood, Percy often forgot the details of their lives beforehand. Nico’s obvious aversion to Washington DC reminded him of one of those details – Hades and Nico’s mom, Maria, had met in DC, where she had been living with her father, the Italian ambassador. After their parents had gotten divorced, Nico and Bianca spent the greater part of their lives living in DC with their mom. Percy wondered how much of this forced publicity nonsense Nico had experienced and witnessed in those years living there with his mother and grandparents.

Before Percy could think on the subject anymore, let alone formulate some kind of polite question to ask and keep the conversation going, he heard a branch snap several feet away and his head jerked in the direction of the sound. It took him a couple seconds to spot the culprit, but a few curls of blonde hair peaked out over the top of a bush. Annabeth, and that meant she’d spotted their flag.

Both Percy and Nico moved into action, scanning the surrounding area for any other invaders, but it looked like Annabeth had been sent as a lone scout. Percy saw her head pop up over the bush one more time and he made eye contact. Her eyes went wide at being caught, and then she straightened up and bolted back the way she’d come in. There was no doubt in Percy’s mind that she was going for back up.

“Stay here,” Percy shouted to Nico. “I’ll get her tagged out.”

If Nico objected, Percy didn’t hear. He was already on Annabeth’s tail, stumbling and slipping in the snow as he attempted to grab a handful while he ran. It took him a couple tries, but he managed to form a snowball and launched it at Annabeth’s back. His aim had always been terrible, and that day proved no exception, the snowball missing decidedly and slamming into a tree a few feet away from her instead. The impact proved enough to draw her attention, though.

Annabeth dared a glance back at Percy over her shoulder. He was already in the midst of attempting to form a second snowball, and his longer strides meant he was gaining on her in the chase. The closer he got, the more likely he’d be able to land a hit. She seemed to come to this conclusion as well, and darted to the side, further into the small wood that surrounded the estate serving as their playground. More trees would give her cover and slow Percy down, but he refused to let her escape with the knowledge of where their flag had been hidden.

Except he did lose her. After his second snowball also missed, Percy had glanced down to collect more snow, and when he popped his head back up, Annabeth had disappeared into the surrounding trees. Percy couldn’t hear any snow crunching from steps, which told him she probably wasn’t still on the run, but his own heavy breathing and the pounding of his heart made it difficult for him to hear anything else that might expose her. He would have to follow her footprints in the snow to find her, but that might very well lead him into a trap of some kind. Instead, he stood his ground, carefully packing his snow into another ball and scanning the area.

A snowball hit Percy square in the back. It knocked the air out of him for a second, but he turned to see Annabeth standing three feet away, a blindingly bright smile of victory on her lips. Percy had no idea how she’d ended up behind him.

“Oh, hell no,” he said and, even though he’d been tagged and knew that meant he was out, he launched his snowball at her and proudly watched it peg her in the shoulder.

“You’re _out_ ,” Annabeth cried in indignation.

Percy grinned at her, pride swelling in his chest at her reaction. “What are you going to do? Tattle to Aunt Beryl again?”

Her jaw clenched and she glared at him, processing her options. Percy had a feeling Annabeth wouldn’t be tattling again, if only because of the way he’d taunted her about it, but he couldn’t help finding it hysterical that she probably would have otherwise done that very thing. Finally, she huffed and took a step forward. “Whatever. You’re out and I’m going to find the rest of my team.”

“No, you’re not,” Percy said, leaning down to scoop up some more snow and then stepping into her path.

Closer now, he watched Annabeth’s gray eyes, especially light in the reflection off the snow, narrow. “Let me pass,” she demanded, trying to sidestep him.

“Not happening,” he told her, quick reflexes making it easy to mirror her steps.

“I swear to God, Percy, if you don’t let me pass I’ll–”

“What? What do you think you’re going to do?” he interrupted, watching anger flare in her eyes again. The sight only heightened his excitement over the confrontation and Percy continued to pack the snowball in his hands, ready to launch it at her at a moment’s notice.

Challenging her had been a mistake. Annabeth caught Percy by surprise by taking a step back, then another, each step slow and cautious. He tensed in anticipation, expecting her to try doubling back and outrun him that way. She didn’t do that, though. After she’d put another three feet between them, Annabeth launched herself directly at Percy in the closest thing to an all out sprint possible with loose snow beneath her feet.

There was only a second for him to react. Percy dropped the snowball in his hands. He knew he wouldn’t be able to handle a direct hit from her, so he dodged to the left. For a brief second he watched her eyes flash with triumph, but he really had no intention of letting her go. In the exact second she got close enough, Percy tackled her. She let out a screech Percy thought sounded like equal parts shock and amusement. The soft bed of snow lessened the blow of their fall, but both Percy and Annabeth grunted when they hit the ground. Then they were rolling, wrestling for control in a flurry of flying snow, limps and shouts.

Percy came out on top, but by the time he had her pinned, he was entirely breathless. Even then, she continued to fight him, breathing just as heavily. For a few seconds he basked in the thrill of his victory, but then he focused in on Annabeth’s face and the game left his mind entirely.

Up close like this, she was dazzlingly beautiful. Curls were splayed out around her head in the snow, catching the sun and shining like actual gold. The sky above reflected in her eyes, turning them an especially gorgeous shade of bluish gray. Exertion left her face flushed a faint shade of red beneath a spattering of faint freckles. Her lips were parted as caught her breath, full and pink and all too tempting. Those lips quirked into a smile, and he should have known that meant something was coming, but all he could do was smile at her stupidly in return.

A second later there was a cloud of snow in his face, and when he recoiled from the attack, Annabeth managed to shove him off and scurry away. She stumbled once on her feet, but Percy was too slow to react and didn’t get up in time to take advantage. Even once he got to his feet, he was still blinking snow out of his eyes and wiping it from his face while trying to follow her.

They made it into the open space of the backyard just in time to see Thalia, Bianca, Hazel and Meg streaking across with the other team’s flag in hand, cheering and cackling as Frank, Reyna and Will followed few feet back, throwing snowballs and missing their marks. Chasing was futile, the four girls crossed the boundary line between sides and all collapsed into the snow in celebration. The game was over. Percy threw his hands into the air and joined in on his team’s cheering.

He only got to gloat for a few seconds before a snowball hit him square in the stomach. “This is your fault!” Annabeth yelled, her earlier indignation and rage returning to her expression.

“I didn’t get your flag,” Percy replied, smile unfading as he pointed to his cousins across the yard, still screaming about their win, “they did.”

“If I’d gotten back in time we could have had your flag already,” Annabeth screeched, quickly packing another snowball and launching it at Percy in rage.

This time he managed to dodge, ducking down to pick up more snow of his own. “You’re a really sore loser, you know that?”

“You’re a _cheater_ ,” she shouted back, trying to avoid the snowball he volleyed at her and failing. Letting out an infuriated growl, Annabeth pegged him with another snowball.

She did have a point there, but it only made Percy smile wider. The rest of the family closed in, deciding to follow the example Percy and Annabeth were setting, and the end of their game devolved into a massive, twelve person snowball fight. Percy was pretty sure the fight turned into a free for all, but his eyes never strayed from a single target. Unfortunately Annabeth’s eyes didn’t seem to stray from him, either, and she was a much better shot.

  


* * *

  


Jason knew two things about Thalia’s games of _Capture the Flag_ – one, she always won, and knowing she would snatch victory no matter what kind of ruined the fun; and two, they also always ended in violence one way or another. 

Using some work he’d brought along as an excuse, Jason opted out of the late morning activities and decided to stay inside. He worked for about an hour and then restlessness settled in, making it hard for him to focus. Working from home had always been easy for Jason, but only in his own home, where his work space was optimized to encourage focus. Anywhere else and Jason struggled, so this didn’t surprise him too much, and he knew how to solve the problem quickly and efficiently. It was time for a walk.

Well, a walk and a cigarette. But if anyone asked, he definitely only took a walk.

The family’s game of _Capture the Flag_ was being held in the open space of the backyard, so Jason opted to take his break in the garden, where snow covered bushes, hedges and trees could hide him from any prying eyes. He’d been trying to quit for over a year, and as far as everyone else was concerned, he had, but some days Jason just _needed_ a cigarette. Usually stress from work pushed him to that point. This weekend it was something more existential, an underlying strain from being around so many people he barely knew giving him the jitters and piling on the anxiety. A few puffs would ease his frayed nerves. In the new year he would definitely quit for good.

Even in the garden, he could hear shouting and screaming from the rest of the family. That all but confirmed his suspicion about the game ending in violence. A fond smile played at Jason’s lips as he took a seat on one of the benches in the garden and pulled out his pack and lighter. From that distance he could still make out the battle cries of his own sister and Annabeth, and when he put a cigarette to his lips his smile had grown more prominent with the affection the sounds inspired.

He’d just taken his first puff, eyes closed and the tension easing in his shoulders, when he heard a shutter click beside him. Eyes popping open, Jason discovered Piper standing a couple feet away, her camera in hand, hanging from a strap around her neck and aimed at him.

“Sorry,” she said, though she didn’t look particularly repentant. “The image was just too good to pass up.”

Instantly, Jason felt warmth rushing to his face, but panic overpowered the embarrassment that compliment inspired. “I, uh, it’s fine, it’s just…” He held up his cigarette, cringing. “I’m not supposed to be doing this.”

“You’re telling me what I have here is blackmail, then?” Piper asked, pointing to her camera, eyes wide with what he could already tell was feigned innocence.

“I’m asking if you could have a little pity on me and delete it,” Jason replied, trying his best to plead with his eyes. His hand automatically flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette and Jason brought it to his lips to take another puff. He’d already been caught, might as well finish the smoke.

Piper studied him as he took a deep hit, her gaze unnerving, but in a very good way. When he exhaled a cloud of smoke, the shutter on her camera clicked again. She broke into a smile and told him, “Sorry, I’m not really the pitying type.”

“Did you seriously just take another picture?” he asked, unable to keep himself from reflecting her smile. Jason couldn’t decide if her audacity was infuriating or attractive. Probably both.

“I did,” she replied with a shrug, and without an ounce of shame. Letting her camera dangle freely from the strap around her neck, she stepped closer and held out her hand. “Could I get a puff?”

Jason did not share cigarettes. He never had, even back in high school when everyone was trying to bum a puff or two off of each other in the parking lot between classes. Piper’s brown eyes remained wide, sunlight reflecting off the snow and bringing them to life, her outstretched fingers wiggling at him in anticipation. Against years of instinct and all his better judgment, Jason held his cigarette out.

Taking the cigarette in hand, she flicked the ash off once and then brought it to her lips. Jason watched more closely than he should have – her lips curling around the butt, her eyes fluttering closed, her chest rising slowly as she took a long and deep breath. Piper held that breath for several seconds, then her mouth formed an O and she exhaled a pillar of smoke. By the time she opened her eyes and held the cigarette back out to him, Jason had looked away, saved from the shame of being caught so blatantly checking her out.

“So, when did you start smoking?” Piper asked, once Jason had reclaimed his quickly shrinking cigarette and taken another puff. He was not thinking, like some ridiculous teenager, about the fact that his lips were now where hers had just been. Jason was definitely more mature than that.

“Sophomore year of high school,” he confessed, considering the cigarette between his fingers now as if it were the same one that had gotten him hooked all those years ago. It might as well have been. “What about you?”

“Freshman year of high school,” she replied with a weary sigh, crossing her arms and moving to sit beside Jason on the bench. “I thought it would get my dad’s attention if I got caught smoking. It didn’t, just got me detention all the time and Percy chewing my ass out over it every other day – which, by the way, please don’t tell him I indulged today. He thinks I quit.”

After one last hit, Jason put the spent cigarette out and leaned back on the bench. “But you haven’t?”

“Kind of?” she said, face scrunching in a way Jason found all too adorable. “Since Percy and I moved in together I’ve managed to keep the smoking to a minimum, but I still have moments of weakness like today.”

 _Moved in together_. Jason wasn’t sure why those words shocked him so much, but he found himself stunned by them. For a second he’d forgotten who he was talking to – Piper wasn’t just a gorgeous woman he’d met somewhere randomly, she was his cousin’s girlfriend. Apparently a very serious girlfriend, if they were living together. This was just a friendly conversation between people who hadn’t wanted to kill themselves playing Thalia’s ridiculous game, nothing more.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Jason said, trying to keep from sounding disappointed over that reminder of his cousin. “I won’t tell Percy if you delete those pictures.”

Piper stared ahead, considering his offer with a great deal of thought. “I won’t delete the pictures, but I promise to never show them to anyone.”

“What’s the point of keeping them if you’re not showing them to anyone?” he asked with a laugh.

“For myself,” she answered, chin tilting up in a challenge as she turned her gaze to him. “I like the way they turned out. It’s been a while since I actually liked one of my own pictures. Keeping them will serve as a reminder not to give up just because I seem doomed to shoot nothing but snotty kids and the pets of overzealous, lonely middle aged women.”

Meeting her eye, Jason had a terrifying realization. As ridiculous as it sounded, as dangerous as the sentiment was considering they’d only spoken a handful of times, he knew there was nothing in the world he would ever be able to deny her. She could have his pictures and hits off his cigarettes and anything else her heart desired, so long as she dared to ask for it. He couldn’t explain why, but Jason had never been able to explain the whims of his own heart.

“They’ll really stay our secret, then?” Jason asked, doing his best to smother both his smile and that incriminating feeling that had just been unleashed.

“Pinkie swear,” Piper replied, holding up her hand with pinkie outstretched, eyes sparkling in the sunlight.

Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a _pinkie swear_ , but he did it there on that bench, linking their pinkies together and sealing it by pressing their thumbs together.

  


* * *

  


“I come in peace,” Percy said, approaching Annabeth with two mugs of hot chocolate in hand. Her eyes narrowed at him instantly, but in the wake of pelting each other with countless snowballs, Percy had a feeling that gaze was more playful than it was dangerous. Still dangerous, of course, especially if and when she was armed with snow, but mostly playful.

After the group had finally grown tired of their chaotic snow fight, everyone had moved back into the house, peeled off their soaking layers of coats, scarves and gloves, and found themselves little corners of the house to warm up in. Annabeth had selected the fireplace in an upstairs sitting area to dispel her chill, and she sat on the floor in front of it, arms wrapped around her knees and chin resting on them, a quilt draped over her shoulders. The flickering fire reflected in her eyes in the same way the sky had outside and Percy found himself wondering just how much of the world could take on new life in that same way.

“I’m not sure I believe you,” Annabeth replied, but she held out her hand for one of the mugs he held.

The opportunity to tease her was too good to pass up, so Percy pulled his hands away. “Oh no, these are both mine.”

She hummed, her glare replaced with a spark of amusement, and she returned her hand to where it had been around her knees. “That doesn’t surprise me in the least. It only makes sense a cheater would be a hot chocolate hog, too.”

“You’re really stuck on that cheater thing,” Percy observed, coming around to take a seat beside her on the carpet in front of the fire. Only when he’d settled did he finally offer her one of the mugs.

“That’s because I’m an expert grudge holder. You’ve made an enemy for life,” she replied, accepting the mug and taking it between both hands to soak up the extra warmth it provided. The night before he’d thought those very same words and having them confirmed only made him laugh.

“Sounds dangerous,” he replied, tilting his mug to his lips and taking a tentative sip. The liquid burned his tongue, but he didn’t mind it in the slightest. In Percy’s opinion hot chocolate was the best when it was scalding.

Annabeth, on the other hand, blew gently into her mug, not yet taking a sip. “It’s very dangerous. I’m patient when it comes to revenge, too.”

“Does Jason know this dark side of you?” Percy asked, forcing himself to look away from her and into the fire. Bringing Jason up was more a reminder for himself than actual curiosity. No matter how captivating her eyes or how fascinating he found her, Annabeth was his cousin’s girlfriend. He wouldn’t let himself forget that fact.

“I’d say Jason learned these things about me when he was four and I was five and he knocked down the block tower I’d spent all day on,” she answered, voice lined with amusement and affection. “It’s been over twenty years and I still haven’t forgotten that little infraction, so you can imagine all the other things I’ve lorded over him since then.”

Percy broke into a wide, unbidden smile, shoulders shaking in a silent laugh. “Poor guy.”

“Does Piper know you can’t be trusted, then?” Annabeth asked, voice a little quieter. When Percy glanced back over at her, he found her also staring into the fire, still blowing on her hot chocolate.

“Piper is well aware of my untrustworthiness, yes,” he confirmed, somehow managing to drag his eyes away from Annabeth again. “I’d actually say she’s an expert in it.”

“She’s a good kisser,” Annabeth said, so casually it made Percy choke on his hot chocolate and almost spit it all over himself. That, he realized, had been Annabeth’s hope, because she was grinning proudly at him when he looked back at her. This woman really was dangerous.

After taking a few seconds to regain his composure, Percy nodded. “Yeah, I–” He paused, catching himself only a millisecond before saying, _I’ve heard as much_. Piper was supposed to be his girlfriend. It would be awfully suspicious if he confessed to having never kissed her. “I know she is,” he decided on.

Their conversation stalled there, but Percy didn’t find himself anxious to restart it, especially not if the topics were going to be Piper and Jason. He leaned back on one arm, watching the fire dance, and stealing glances at the woman beside him more often than he should have. There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask her – why she chose that sweater the night before, what made her want to be an architect, how she felt about these contrived festivities, just to name a few – but he held his tongue and let the silence between them drag on, just enjoying the fact that she apparently didn’t hate him, even with all the cheating, and even if they were now enemies for life.

“Shit,” Annabeth finally said, glancing at her phone screen, long after Percy’s mug of hot chocolate had gone dry. “I need to go get ready for those stupid family pictures before dinner.”

“I didn’t realize it was that time yet,” Percy confessed, pulling out his own phone to check the time. Sure enough, it was about an hour before they were expected to be downstairs to pose in front of the largest of Beryl’s Christmas trees. He hadn’t noticed how much time had passed while sitting there.

Hesitating to stand, Annabeth looked at Percy for a few more seconds. “I guess I’ll see you down there.”

“Yep, see you down there,” he agreed, and for some reason decided to salute her with two fingers. That was definitely one of the weirder things he’d ever done. Weird or not, the gesture made Annabeth snort a laugh, and as he watched her finally walk away, Percy figured that was quite an accomplishment in and of itself.

  


* * *

  


Because Jason’s mother was the most ridiculous woman to have ever lived, the dress code for Christmas dinner (and the series of family photos being taken prior to it) was formal wear, only in the colors black, white, red and green. Jason and Annabeth had decided on green. Her dress was all green velvet, form fitting with off the shoulder sleeves. His tie matched it in color, but not fabric, because a velvet tie would have been too much for Jason to handle. That had been another one of Beryl’s caveats, though – couples were asked to match.

“Did you have fun out there today?” Jason asked as he and Annabeth were finishing up in their room. There hadn’t been much time to talk between their respective showers and all the dressing, hair and makeup.

A small smile pulled at Annabeth’s lips as she focused on the mirror above the room’s dresser, putting in earrings, and she shrugged. “We lost.”

“You don’t seem to upset about it,” he observed, not even trying to hide his surprise. Jason had once seen Annabeth throw an actual tantrum when she lost to him playing _Candyland_. Age had not made her any less competitive.

“Thalia always wins,” she replied, trying too hard to sound indifferent on the matter. “I guess I’ve finally resigned myself to losing to her.”

Jason, finished with his limited required grooming, had taken a seat at the foot of their bed and leaned back on his arms, studying Annabeth carefully. “What are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything,” she told him, the confusion on her face not forced or fake. Annabeth really thought she didn’t have any secrets, but Jason knew the curious smile and attempt to sound unbothered had to mean something. When he didn’t agree, Annabeth turned to face him, lips pursed. “I’m not hiding anything, Jason. The game was just fun.”

“Sure, the game was just fun,” he agreed, though he didn’t actually believe her and made as much obvious.

Annabeth glared at him for a few more seconds before turning to face the mirror so she could put in her second earring. “What about you, what did you do while the rest of us were having _actual_ fun?”

“Worked on that presentation I have on Monday,” Jason answered, suddenly very interested in looking anywhere but at Annabeth. He’d also spent a fair amount of time sitting in the garden with Piper and she didn’t need to know that little detail.

“And at what point did you go out for a smoke?” Annabeth asked, with all the nonchalance of a skilled predator who’d caught prey in an inescapable trap.

Letting out a defeated sigh, because there would be no denying what he’d done with how confident Annabeth sounded, Jason threw his head back. “How did you know?”

“You stunk of it when I came into the room,” she replied, and in the mirror Jason could see her lips were pinched into a disapproving frown. “I thought the gum was working for you this time.”

“It was,” he quickly assured her. “I mean, it is. I just needed the real thing this weekend.”

When Jason had started smoking in high school, Annabeth had been the first one to catch him. She’d smelled it on him first and decided to stalk him until she managed to catch him in the act, which hadn’t taken her long. Despite the lecture she’d given him after the fact, she hadn’t ratted him out. Jason had been under a lot of pressure at the time – expectations around sports and academics were weighing on him, his parents had been separated, Thalia had been away at school, and Jason had felt like everything was spiraling out of control. He didn’t remember what exactly had pushed him to pick up that first cigarette, but after the choking on smoke had passed, he’d felt relieved, content, relaxed. From then on, it had become a habit.

No one understood how difficult that time had been for him better than Annabeth. She’d been under a lot of the same pressures and, since her parents had been divorced for years at that point, she had related on that point most of all. That never stopped her from trying to get him to quit, but it also made her less judgmental than Jason figured she might have otherwise been. Trying to hide the habit from her now came more from Jason not wanting to disappoint her than any actual fear.

“Just make sure your mom doesn’t catch you if you need another,” Annabeth said, heaving a heavy sigh and smoothing out her dress. “She’s always blamed me for you smoking.”

“My mom loves you,” Jason objected with a scoff. Sometimes Jason felt like his mother even liked Annabeth more than she liked Jason himself. She’d certainly been satisfied when Jason had brought Annabeth home as his supposed girlfriend at Thanksgiving, which had been expected, and she’d continued to encourage him on the matter of their relationship in the weeks since. At one point she’d even implied no one would think they were crazy if they were engaged soon.

Annabeth turned around again, moving across the room to grab a small handbag – it had Jason’s EpiPen in it, which Annabeth now carried in hand to every shared meal. “Your mom loves me because I’ve always had your back and she thinks I can take care of her precious baby boy. Now, more than ever, she thinks it’s _my_ responsibility to make you quit.”

“Please do not call me her _precious baby boy_ ,” Jason insisted, resisting the urge to gag.

“Yeah, well, it’s what you are,” she continued, shaking her head. “Now, let’s get down there and get this night over with.”

  


* * *

  


Posing for pictures was Percy’s least favorite thing in the world, which he realized was kind of ironic considering his best friend was a photographer. Piper taking his photo had always been different, though. She rarely had them stand in awkward positions or force uncomfortable smiles. Relaxed, candid moments were her bread and butter. Standing next to Triton and pretending he didn’t half want to punch his brother just for breathing too heavily was a whole different ball of wax.

The tie he’d been forced to wear didn’t help, either. Percy hated ties. They made him feel like he was suffocating, and wearing a brick red one that matched perfectly with Piper’s sleeveless, lace covered dress only served to make him feel stupid on top of it.

Family members were shuffled around in various combinations for nearly an hour, all in the close quarters of the living room and making the space uncomfortably hot very quickly. Percy kept finding himself trying to think of an excuse to go over to where Annabeth and Jason were stationed with Thalia and Reyna, but nothing came to mind and any time he came close to working up the courage someone was called up to stand for another round of pictures. It was for the best. If he indulged these urges he would only end up creating some kind of problem, either for himself or for everyone.

That problem seemed intent on causing itself, though, because when they were finally herded into the massive dining room for Christmas dinner, the assigned seats at the table were exactly as they had been on Thanksgiving. Percy found himself sitting directly across from Jason yet again, with Annabeth right there, too easy to look at and just as easy to talk to. Green was an amazing color on her, too, and her hair had been left down, curls cascading down her shoulders, delicate ringlets bouncing lightly as she moved.

“What’s your mother up to today, Percy?” Zeus asked from the head of the table, startling Percy out of his train of thought. Usually that would have been a good thing, but Percy hated when his dad’s family brought his mom up.

“My parents and sister are just having a chill day at home,” Percy answered, giving his uncle a tight smile. He didn’t miss the way his father huffed at the word _parents_ , but as far as Percy was concerned, Paul had been more of a parent to him than Poseidon ever was. Parents were present and engaged in their kids’ lives. Paul may have come into the picture late in Percy’s life, but he’d made an effort to be someone Percy could depend on from day one.

“Beryl and I were talking the other day,” Zeus continued, his gaze focused on the ham he was slicing up on his plate, “and we were thinking Sally should come to our Mother’s Day brunch in May. We’ll be sending out invitations soon.”

Percy definitely didn’t like _that_ idea, but he decided to be as diplomatic as possible about the subject, if not a little tense in his delivery. “My little sister and I usually take her out for Mother’s Day. I’m not sure she’d want to kick tradition.”

“Well,” Zeus replied, chomping down on a piece of ham, “there’s no harm in sending her an invitation and letting her decide.”

Before Percy could lose his cool and snap back, Piper rested a hand on his shoulder and smiled. “I think Sally would _love_ to be invited, even if she can’t make it in the end.”

“Exactly,” Zeus agreed, pointing to Piper with his knife. “The two of you and… what’s the girl’s name again? It starts with an E, right?”

“Estelle,” Percy supplied, curling his fist into a ball.

“Right, Estelle,” Zeus said, nodding and chomping wetly on his ham. “All of you should come along too. It would be just like taking her out, you’d just be bringing her here instead of some impersonal restaurant or whatever. Spending the day with family is far better.”

For that to be true, Percy would have to consider the people around that table his actual family. He didn’t, and he definitely didn’t consider them his mother’s family, after all the ways they’d ostracized and mistreated her over the years. Taking her out for pizza and to Coney Island along with Estelle and Paul like always would be much more enjoyable and meaningful, but May was a long ways away. Percy had matured enough since his teenage years to know not to pick a fight just because the other person made it so damn easy.

“You’ll be there with your mother as well, right Annabeth?” Zeus asked into the void of silence left by Percy’s lack of reply.

Annabeth hadn’t said much since dinner started, and she looked startled to be addressed – or maybe as startled by the subject as Percy had been. “ _My_ mother is going to be there?”

“Of course,” Zeus answered with a booming laugh. “She’s as good as family, too, and might very well be the real thing before long, the way things are going.”

Almost too quick to see it, Annabeth and Jason glanced at each other awkwardly. Thalia snorted a laugh from Zeus’s left hand, covering the sound unconvincingly with a cough. Clearly Zeus was getting ahead of the couple themselves.

“I guess so,” Annabeth conceded, turning her gaze back to Zeus. “If Mom’s going to be there, I don’t doubt I will be, too.”

Zeus shoved another bite of ham into his mouth and smacked it loudly, grinning at everyone around him. “It’s settled, then. I’ll make sure Beryl finalizes the guest list soon so everyone can save the date.”

  


* * *

  


“This is an absolute disaster.”

Jason had already changed and climbed into bed, glad to have the day behind him, but Annabeth still wore her dress and had been pacing their room since they’d made their way up. Her mounting anxiety had resulted in them retiring earlier than the rest of the family, who Jason could still hear downstairs singing another round of carols, this time with Nico at the piano and Percy and Piper leading the song selection. He was pretty sure everyone was a little drunk from the wine that had been served with dinner. He was also pretending he wasn’t disappointed about missing out, because he knew Piper was the only reason he felt that way.

“How is it a disaster?” Jason asked, beginning to feel dizzy as he watched her circle the small space for the umpteenth time. “We break up in January on good terms and no one bats an eye about you coming with your mom to brunch on Mother’s Day, because it was all _on good terms_.”

“Maybe your family will be okay with it, but my mom is going to be chewing me out about how awkward I’ve made her life that entire brunch,” Annabeth replied, finally coming to a stop so she could glare at Jason. He preferred the pacing. “And probably for the rest of my life.”

“Okay, so,” Jason said, bracing himself to make a suggestion that sounded even more ridiculous than his initial plan for them to pretend to date over the holiday season, “we keep this up until then.”

Annabeth stared at him, glare intensifying. “How does that solve the problem? Pretending to stay together that long would only make it worse.”

“Why would it be worse?” he asked, shrugging, as if he couldn’t list a dozen reasons right off the top of his head himself.

“Mother’s Day is in _May_ ,” she told him, which Jason knew, so he nodded and she sighed. “That’s five months away, and they already think we’ve been together since before Thanksgiving. Convincing them we ended on good terms because we didn’t vibe after a couple months would be a lot easier than convincing of them the same after _six_ months.”

“Or,” Jason argued, holding a hand toward her, “they’ll be even more accepting of our decision because they think we gave it a real shot without just giving up because we couldn’t push past the friend phase fast enough.”

Despite only half believing in the idea himself, it gave Annabeth pause. She crossed her arms, tugging her bottom lip between her teeth and chewing while she mulled over the possibility. Jason knew she was playing through possible scenarios in her mind, each and every potential outcome reached in a matter of seconds. Annabeth’s mind was more impressive than any super computer, in his opinion. Sometimes that was a scary thing, because she was eerily good at predicting what he might do or say. Usually it worked in his favor, though.

“That still means another six months of pretending we’re a couple,” Annabeth finally pointed out, but she didn’t seem quite as panicked anymore.

She had a point there, but Jason liked this calmer state they were approaching and decided to double down on pretending this was all no big deal. “Is it really six months? What’s really even going to happen between now and then? We were already doing New Year’s, and that’s just at Thalia’s anyway, no parents or anything.”

“There’s St. Patrick’s Day,” Annabeth offered after a few seconds of thought, “but that’s just Thalia’s thing, too, so I guess it wouldn’t be any different than New Year’s.”

“See,” he said, maybe even beginning to believe it himself.

“We’d have to do Easter, though,” she continued, nose wrinkling. “The whole Easter egg hunt is my mom’s biggest non-election related event. She’ll expect us both to be there.”

“Which is just like, watching a bunch of kids run around for a few hours and then posing for some pictures,” Jason reasoned, shrugging. This was definitely sounding more doable by the second. “So, all we really have to worry about before Mother’s Day is Easter, and that will be a piece of cake.”

Apprehension remained written on Annabeth’s face and he tried to anticipate what her next argument might be. He’d never been as good at predicting her thoughts as she was at predicting his, something that proved true that evening, because she all but blindsided him with what she said. “I just feel bad lying to everyone.”

“Why would you feel bad about that?” he asked, hiding neither his surprise nor his confusion. Lying had been the whole plan. Annabeth had known what they were getting themselves into from the start.

“All I thought about when we started was how we’d be tricking our parents,” she explained, voice softening and arms crossing to wrap around herself. “I didn’t think about how we’d be lying to all your cousins and everybody, too. I like some of these people, Jason, and it just feels kind of crummy making friends with them based on this lie.”

Jason knew Annabeth had enjoyed herself that afternoon, and it seemed like a lot of his cousins liked her just as much as she apparently liked them. She might even want to _stay_ friends with some of them. It made sense for her to feel guilty, but no one ever had to know about their scheme. Thalia would keep their secret, even if Jason was pretty sure his sister intended to make things as difficult as possible.

“We don’t have to decide right this minute,” he said, hoping that might comfort her. “Any time between now and May we can change our minds, too.”

“I guess we made this mess of a bed,” Annabeth decided with a sigh, “and now we have to lay in it, whether it’s dealing with my mom being a pain in the ass or keeping up the ruse a little longer than we planned.”

They were in agreement there. Putting the discussion off for another day, Annabeth grabbed a change of clothes and disappeared into the bathroom to clean up, leaving Jason to sit and think about the web they were weaving. He did, secretly, like the idea of not having to face all those future gatherings on his own, even if the girlfriend he’d be bringing along was a fake one, but also especially if that fake girlfriend was Annabeth.

  


* * *

  


Insomnia had been Percy’s near constant companion for as long as he could remember. He’d tried just about everything to manage it, from medication, to strict sleep hygiene routines, everything in between, and every imaginable combination. Nothing had ever worked, at least not consistently. One way or another, he always ended up unable to sleep eventually.

That night he had a pretty good idea about what was keeping him up – thoughts of his mother, invited to that stupid brunch and too nice to reject it. He couldn’t imagine they would invite her just to intentionally make a mockery of her, but their prejudices could shine through regardless, and then her day would be ruined entirely. Percy would need to convince her to ditch. His mom had never been very receptive to _convincing_ , though. When she decided to do something, she did it, and she didn’t allow anyone to change her mind. They maybe had that in common.

After hours of tossing and turning, anguished over this development, Percy decided to get his ass up and try to burn off some of the nervous energy keeping him awake.

Wandering around someone else’s house always made Percy feel weird, even under the best of circumstances. That was compounded by the fact that his uncle’s house wasn’t just a _house_ – it was the New York state’s governor’s mansion. Walking around alone in the dark was like being in a museum after hours. Percy couldn’t help thinking he was breaking the rules, or maybe even an actual law. He also couldn’t shake the fear he’d turn a corner and some security guard or something would arrest him for being out of bed past midnight.

Percy wasn’t the only one up, though. As he padded nervously into the smaller of the two (yes, the mansion had _two_ ) kitchens that served for casual, instead of formal or professional, use, he was surprised to discover Annabeth sitting at the counter, working on her laptop with a glass of water beside her. She seemed equally startled by his arrival, looking up at him with wide eyes. Bloodshot eyes, he noticed in the light of her laptop screen, with the beginnings of light purple bags forming beneath them.

“I didn’t expect anyone else to be up,” Percy confessed, flashing her an apologetic smile for the interruption.

She shifted awkwardly on her bar stool, following his movement as he crossed over to the fridge in search of something to drink. “Couldn’t sleep, so I decided to try using the time to get some work done.”

“You have to take work with you on _vacation_? At _Christmas_?” he asked, opting for the time old insomnia cure of a glass of milk. Warming it up would have been nice, but Percy thought that would be a little too much in a kitchen that was not his own.

“If I want to be taken even remotely seriously, yeah,” she said, heaving a weary sigh and turning her attention back to her laptop. “A couple of the partners at our firm still don’t realize I’m not just there to get their coffee anymore.”

It was next to impossible for him to imagine Annabeth running around taking drink orders from her co-workers, at least not without putting up a fuss about it. He was also a little surprised pelting each other with snowballs earlier had resulted in them becoming so friendly, but he decided to run with it. “Were you ever just there to get their coffee?”

“Technically, no,” Annabeth told him, rolling her eyes, though he got the impression the exasperation was aimed at her bosses and not him for the question. “Interns are supposed to help with all sorts of things while earning their licenses, but sexism is still a pretty big issue in my field, so half the time they treated me like an overpaid assistant – and a few of them were _happy_ to let me know they thought I was overpaid.”

Glass of milk in hand, Percy leaned against the counter across from where Annabeth sat, studying the barely concealed look of frustration on her face. “I can’t exactly say I relate based on your circumstances, but everyone thinks gym teachers are overpaid. They might be right, though.”

Apparently Percy had said the right thing, because a smile started to pull at Annabeth’s lips. “Why did you decide to be a gym teacher? Middle school, too, right?”

“Yep, middle school,” Percy confirmed, then took a sip of milk to give him time to decide how in depth he wanted to get explaining to this near stranger why he’d chosen to spend his life working with a bunch of stinky, complaining, kids. He decided to go with the generic explanation he’d defaulted to when on the job hunt a few years prior. “That’s a hard time for a lot of kids. Their bodies are changing, they’re figuring out who they are, they’re extra aware of what their peers are doing and thinking, some of them are really shitty to the others about it all, and PE is where all those things kind of culminate. A good teacher can mean the difference between that hour a day being traumatic, making them hate exercise for the rest of their lives, or that hour being fun and productive, hopefully leaving them with a positive view of exercise instead.”

Annabeth looked up from her laptop, studying him with a scrutiny that quickly left Percy feeling self conscious. “How exactly do you make that happen?”

“By paying attention,” he replied with a shrug. “Sometimes it sucks, because I’m bound by certain requirements the state and district give us, like making them run the mile and shit like that, but I do my best to make sure I’m aware of their needs, keep the environment positive and encouraging, and try to let the kids know they can come to me about anything.”

“I highly doubt you’re overpaid,” she concluded, another smile beginning to form on her lips. It didn’t quite get there, and she turned her attention back to whatever she’d been doing on her laptop.

“Yeah, well, I also teach health, so I go that extra mile to earn my keep,” Percy offered, hiding his disappointment about that failed smile by taking another drink of milk.

Her eyes flickered back to him for only a second, but just long enough for Percy to catch. “What’s it like teaching health to middle schoolers?”

“It’s actually not so bad,” he admitted, though he had been very against the idea when it had first been asked of him a couple years prior. “Middle schoolers and I have the same sense of humor, so we have fun.”

“That does make sense,” Annabeth said, and that smile she’d been fighting finally made its appearance.

Percy tilted his glass of milk at her. “You’re rude.”

“People have told me that before,” she replied without missing a beat, eyes still locked on her computer screen, but smile only growing, “but at least I’m not a cheater.”

“Never gonna live that one down, am I?” Percy asked after he finished his glass and turned to rinse it out.

“Not so long as I have anything to say about it,” Annabeth confirmed, and he could hear the smile still in her voice. It was a nice sound, paired with a very nice smile. Percy certainly preferred it to her glares, at least.

Once his cup had been rinsed and deposited in the sink, he figured he didn’t have any reason to stick around in the kitchen. Annabeth probably didn’t want someone interrupting her work time, either. For a few seconds he hesitated, though, shuffling around the kitchen awkwardly.

“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” Percy finally said, deciding against sticking around and risking this tentative peace that had developed between them. Maybe Piper had been right about trying to have a good relationship with these people. His cousins, and their significant others, weren’t responsible for the crap he’d been through at the hands of his father and half-siblings.

“See you in the morning,” Annabeth agreed, looking up from her laptop again. This time her smile was tight, and Percy wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Try not to stay up to late, Annabeth,” he added with a nod, before ducking his head and starting toward the door.

So quietly he almost missed it, Annabeth called back, “You too, Percy.”

She certainly had him pegged. Instead of heading back to bed, Percy ended up wandering the house for over an hour after that, trying to wear himself out enough to sleep. His mind wasn’t on the conundrum with his mom anymore, though. For the second night in a row, Percy found his thoughts filled with his cousin’s interesting (and unfortunately very hot) girlfriend.

  


* * *

  


Day three of the Christmas festivities had significantly less structure than the previous two, something Jason was immensely thankful for. He spent most of the morning working. Annabeth spent most of it sleeping, which Jason figured was the result of her not going to sleep until close to five. By the time lunch rolled around, though, Jason’s mother decided she’d had enough of their antisocial behavior and showed up at their door demanding they both come downstairs.

“If we were actually dating, this is the moment I would say your mom isn’t getting any grandkids out of me,” Annabeth grumbled as she battled her hair with a hairbrush.

“You shouldn’t be sleeping past noon, anyway,” Jason replied, pulling on a sweater and then moving to the mirror to check his own hair. He generally kept it short enough that he didn’t have to worry too much about styling, but since he’d been holed up in the room all morning there was no telling how it looked. At least Jason could count on it looking less crazy than Annabeth’s.

The crazy hair only added to the manic look in her eyes when she pointed at him menacingly with her hairbrush. “I am almost thirty years old and I will sleep past noon when I damn well please.”

All Jason dared to reply to her declaration with was raised eyebrows, and even that much earned him a murderous glare. Most people freaked out about turning thirty. Annabeth was only seven months away from that milestone, but instead of having a crisis, she’d decided the new phase of adulthood made the perfect excuse for just about anything. Jason was pretty sure it was usually a joke, but she did kind of have a point – they were long past old enough to call their own shots in life.

Except they were both there playing at a fake relationship, which they planned to continue for months, mostly to appease their parents.

Downstairs was the kind of chaos Jason had expected. The whole family had assembled in the dining room for a lunch of self-serve sandwiches, but seats weren’t formally assigned like their dinners and the kids weren’t relegated off to a separate space to be tended by their nannies. It was loud and crowded, and for once Jason found he didn’t mind the madness. Whether because they’d all been in such close quarters for two days and were relaxing or just because the atmosphere wasn’t as ceremonial, everyone seemed a little friendlier, a little more alive and genuine.

After making himself a sandwich, Jason stood at the edge of the room trying to decide where he should try to insert himself. Thalia and Reyna were already there, in the midst of eating over a conversation with their cousins Bianca and Meg and their partners. That would be the safe bet, even though Jason wasn’t entirely sure what to make of his cousins, but he wanted to challenge himself, not be safe. Annabeth had also already seated herself, joining a group that consisted of Piper, Hazel and Will. Joining them was equally as tempting, though Jason wondered how much of that temptation was because of the draw he felt toward Piper, and Annabeth was just as safe a choice for company as Thalia and Reyna.

Toward the end of the table Nico and Frank were chatting over their meal, quieter than the rest of the assembled groups, but still casually enough. Jason remembered what Annabeth had told him Christmas Eve about their _Mythomagic_ group, her insistence he might actually like them if he gave them a chance. With a deep breath, Jason decided to take a risk.

“Is anyone sitting here?” he asked, approaching the empty chair across the table from Frank and Nico with his plate and an ice cold bottle of water.

Both Frank and Nico seemed surprised to have their conversation interrupted, and in hindsight Jason thought he probably should have waited for a lull to interject himself, but a second later Frank smiled. “Nope. It’s all yours.”

“Cool,” Jason replied, flashing an awkward smile in return. They watched him set his plate down and slip into the chair, not yet returning to the discussion they’d been having before Jason cut in. “What, uh– What were you talking about?”

Nico took a sidelong glance at Frank, as if trying to decide whether to fess up to whatever the topic at hand had been, but then shrugged and faced Jason. When he finally answered, there was a challenge in the tilt of his head, as if daring Jason to make some kind of snide remark or pass judgment on them. “I was telling Frank about the new series of _Mythomagic_ cards we’re going to be launching in January.”

It truly had been years since Jason had last played the game himself. In high school it had been a secret hobby of his, not something he talked about openly. Having been so ashamed of an interest in his youth made Jason cringe now, but at the time he hadn’t wanted to associated with all the _weird_ kids who would take cards out to play at lunch or join the club that got together twice a week to play. He had been an athlete, an AP student, treasurer of the student council. His reputation hadn’t allowed for people knowing he liked playing a card game about gods and monsters. Part of him wondered if he might not have picked up bad habits like smoking if he’d allowed himself to just do what he enjoyed, rather than what people expected, rather than caring what they might think.

As Annabeth had so helpfully reminded him earlier, Jason was almost thirty years old. He didn’t have the energy to act like he was above anything anymore.

“Annabeth told me you guys get together to play back in the city?” he asked, glancing cautiously between Frank and Nico and hoping his tone didn’t accidentally convey any judgment.

“Yeah,” Frank replied, flashing Nico another curious look. “We usually do Wednesdays, but sometimes we’ll get together for daylong tournaments on the weekends. Do… you play?”

“I used to, in high school,” Jason told them, trying very hard to smile. It probably made him look crazy. “I’m sure a lot’s changed since then.”

Cautiously, as if they still weren’t convinced Jason wasn’t setting them up, Nico and Frank began to explain what had changed in the game in the years that had passed since he last played. Jason asked questions and stayed engaged in the conversation long after he had finished his sandwich. A few times he caught Annabeth watching him curiously, and once his mom stopped by to say hello and exchange a few pleasantries, but for the most part Jason just hung out with the other two guys. 

By the time Hazel swung by to tell Frank and Nico that Hades was looking for all of them, Jason had learned about more than _Mythomagic_. He’d discovered Nico also stopped playing for a long time, only picking it back up after landing a job in the art department designing new cards. Frank, on the other hand, had kept up with the game since he first started playing in middle school. The two of them discovered their shared interest after Frank had been dating Hazel only a few months, and since then had played together with a few of Nico’s co-workers weekly.

“If you ever want to play, shoot one of us a text,” Frank told Jason before Hazel dragged him away. “Maybe Nico will finally be able to win a hand or two before you get your footing again.”

“Fuck you, Zhang,” Nico replied, a grin plastered across his face.

Hazel scrunched her nose and pinched her brother on the arm. “Save the trash talk for game nights or I’m going to beat your scrawny ass myself.”

Jason couldn’t help smiling as he watched the three of them disappear from the dining room, but that smile faded less than a minute later when Annabeth appeared beside him, wearing her most smug expression. “Making friends, huh?”

“I guess,” he conceded. _Friends_ seemed like a strong word after one conversation, but Jason was already, secretly, considering taking Frank up on that offer of joining them some time. Giving it a shot wouldn’t hurt, even if it ended up not being his thing anymore.

“I told you so,” Annabeth said in a sing-song voice, pursing her lips after and reaching up to pinch his cheek, something she’d taken to doing after seeing his mom do it when they were in middle school. 

The pinches never hurt, but Jason swatted her hand away just the same. “I’m going back upstairs. That was enough socializing for the whole weekend.”

“That sounds like a bad idea,” she replied, thankfully not trying to go back in for another pinch and instead crossing her arms. “Piper and I were talking and there is a _bunch_ of gingerbread stuff leftover from the other night. We had the idea the four of us should have a rematch. Keep up this friendliness streak of yours and join us.”

“You and Piper, huh?” Jason said, trying to sound neutral and averting his gaze, lest Annabeth see anything suspicious in his eye. His attraction to Piper obviously made him curious, but Annabeth’s interest in Piper also intrigued him – that had been quite a kiss they shared under the mistletoe, even if it had been a joke, and Annabeth had been single even longer than Jason. The two of them had always shared a type. If Jason was attracted, it wouldn’t be a surprise to discover Annabeth felt the same.

Miraculously, the poor diversion worked. Annabeth smacked him lightly on the arm, only catching on to half of the reason he questioned her. “She’s great, and I think you’d get along with her, too. Let’s leave the work be today, for once. If _I’m_ the one saying that, we both know it’s for the best.”

“Fine,” he agreed, opting not to think too much about his own motivation. “At least this time we can get a picture for Leo.”

  


* * *

  


Percy had spent most of the morning out in the snow playing with his oldest niece and nephews, building snowmen, teaching the kids how to pack killer snowballs, trying to get some decent speed sledding down the small hill closest to the house, and just generally chasing them around aimlessly. He wasn’t sure whether his siblings were okay with him taking the kids out because they just wanted any time away they could get, or because the nannies monitored playtime from the sidelines, but he decided not to think too long on the question. The ends justified the means.

When the kids were called in for lunch, Percy didn’t quite feel like going in yet himself. He lingered out in the snow, putting a few finishing touches on the snowmen and taking pictures with his phone. After that he headed upstairs to change out of his heavy, and very wet, snow wear, and clean up a little. Most of the sandwich fixings had been picked through when Percy finally made it down to the dining room, but he wasn’t a picky eater and made do. 

He had just finished eating in solitude when Piper approached, wearing a smile Percy could only describe as dangerous. “We’re having a gingerbread house rematch with Jason and Annabeth.”

“ _We_ are?” Percy replied, narrowing his eyes at her. “I don’t remember agreeing to this.”

“Be in the family kitchen in fifteen minutes,” she told him, ignoring his obvious objection. “That’s an order, Percy, not a request.”

That probably should have made him mad, but instead he laughed. “Since when do you get to order me around?”

“Since I became your girlfriend,” Piper replied, loud enough that the other stragglers still hanging around in the dining room most definitely heard her. There was no way for him to deny it without betraying their lie. She really was one devious woman.

Fifteen minutes later, Percy found himself back in the smaller of two kitchens. Piper and Annabeth were both already there, setting out the leftover supplies from a few nights before and making what seemed to be friendly conversation. Percy wondered how well all those cookie and candy pieces could have held up since their night of competition, but didn’t put the thoughts to words.

“I think the two of you should give us a head start on this thing,” Percy told Annabeth when he’d come up to a counter beside the girls and crossed his arms. “You obviously have an unfair advantage.”

Annabeth leaned against the counter across from him, arms crossed and a devilish little smile on her lips. “Actually, Piper and I have already discussed that problem, and another, more important, one. We’ve come to an agreement.”

“What _more important_ problem?” Percy asked, glancing at Piper and not liking the fact that her smirk matched Annabeth’s perfectly.

“The problem that you’re a cheater,” Annabeth answered, scrunching her nose at him.

Before Percy could go into a string of arguments on that matter – because the jellybeans had been _Piper’s_ idea, not his, and he really didn’t think it was fair to have that still held against him, even after the snowball fight – Jason entered the kitchen, rounding out the group. He seemed just as uneasy about this whole idea as Percy felt, which kind of ticked Percy off. _Jason_ didn’t have anything to be uneasy about. This was his family’s house, he wasn’t a borderline outcast, and he had a great girlfriend who very clearly cared deeply about him, considering how much effort she was putting into having fun this weekend.

Percy decided to bury down his bitterness as much as possible and focused back on the girls. “So what’s this solution you came up with?”

Coming up beside Annabeth and leaning against the counter as well, shoulder to shoulder, Jason raised his eyebrows. “Solution?”

“Since you and Annabeth are weird architecture nerds, and she doesn’t trust Percy not to be a massive cheater,” Piper explained, focusing mostly on Jason, her dangerous smile turning into one of budding excitement, “we’re going to switch teams. You’re mine, and Annabeth will have the difficult job of keeping in Percy in check as her partner.”

“It was Piper’s brilliant idea,” Annabeth added with a courteous nod. “I’d suggested we do girls versus boys first.”

Piper did look awfully pleased with herself, which gave Percy the uncomfortable idea she might be up to something. “That didn’t really solve either problem, though. We would have still had an advantage, between Annabeth’s expertise and my artistic gifts, and we’d still have to worry about Percy trying to sabotage.”

“ _You_ were the one who came up with the idea of throwing jellybeans at them,” Percy finally snapped, and he wished he had something on hand to throw at Piper that minute, too. Unfortunately all the candy was on the counter behind Jason and Annabeth.

“Sounds like a very convenient excuse,” Annabeth said, staring him down. He might have thought she really was still upset were it not for the twitch of her lips. “Was Piper also possessing you yesterday when I hit you with that snowball and you refused to go to jail?”

They all knew Piper had not been, but Percy couldn’t help smiling at the memory – her complete outrage, the aggressive exchange of snowballs, tackling her into the snow after the fact. “No, that was all me.”

“That’s what I thought,” she replied, and Percy thought he saw her cheeks beginning to turn red, but she turned toward the counter too quickly for him to be sure. “We set up workstations on either end of the island. Two hours seemed like overkill, so we’re going to keep it to one. Thalia and Reyna are going to come in for a blind judging when we’re finished.”

“Good luck, Perce,” Piper chimed as she passed through the small space between Percy and the other two. He bit back any smart remarks, knowing they would only raise questions from Jason and Annabeth.

  


* * *

  


Enjoying this arrangement as much as he did made Jason feel more than a little guilty. When he took his position at one end of the counter with Piper, his heart was in his throat and his mouth quickly went dry. It wasn’t unlike his allergic reaction over Thanksgiving dinner, only this time he was free of the unconscious sense he was actually dying. If anything, standing there beside Piper proved the opposite. Jason was almost _too_ aware of the fact that he was alive.

They planned their gingerbread house in a rush of whispers, leaned in close so they couldn’t possibly be overheard. Piper’s eyes danced with delight between Jason and the supplies arranged in front of them. She offered up suggestions and asked questions while he pitched an idea for the base of their structure, never shooting down any of his ideas outright, but building off them until the pair had developed a working idea of what their gingerbread house would look like. They agreed to get started on building first, and then they could work through details and decorations once the foundation was finished.

To Jason’s horror, Piper used _way_ too much icing. It didn’t take long for Jason to realize as much, and then he found himself panicking a little. Their dynamic so far had been great and he didn’t want to ruin it, but he knew Annabeth would not be allowing that kind of mistake and it could mean the difference between a victory and a loss.

“Maybe I should do the icing and you should place the cookies,” Jason suggested, tentatively reaching for the icing bag in Piper’s hands. He needed to take it before she made a mess they couldn’t recover from.

“Why?” she asked, pulling the icing bag out of his reach. Her eyebrows pinched and the smile she’d been wearing for most of their time so far morphed into a disgruntled pout.

Jason almost backed down in response to her expression. He wanted to win, though, so he powered through explaining the issue. “You’re using too much icing.”

“Using more will make it sturdier,” she argued, nodding to the massive glob of icing she laid down for the foundation of their first wall.

“No,” he said, trying not to sound too bossy or rude. That probably failed, but it was too late for him to back down now. “If you use too much, it won’t dry fast enough and then it becomes unstable when adding more pieces.”

For a few seconds she stared at him, the curl of her bottom lip chipping away at his resolve, then Piper let out a huff and nodded. “I’ll use less. It’s better for you to be on cookie placement, though, just tell me if I’m still using too much.”

She still used too much, and then she didn’t use nearly enough, but Jason felt a little less scared to point out what she needed to change to her as they progressed, and soon Piper had learned the perfect balance of icing. As heartbreaking as the pitiful expression on her face had been when he’d first commented on the icing, the way she shone with pride after they’d finished the shape of their gingerbread house left Jason beaming just as brightly, and he knew he’d done the right thing. Their structure wasn’t as extravagant as the one he’d made with Annabeth a few nights before, but today there was less time, and Piper wasn’t also an architect with years of experience. They’d done a pretty damn good job.

The timer on Jason’s phone told them they still had a little over half an hour once their gingerbread house was standing and stable. Jason figured that was a good chunk of time to finish off and end up with something presentable.

Transitioning to decoration came easy. Since he had spearheaded the construction process, Jason let Piper take control of the artistic side of things. She directed him with confidence and, while he wasn’t sure where she was going with the design every step of the way, he could tell the picture was clear in her mind. Jason didn’t need to know what the picture in her mind looked like to follow instructions, thankfully.

As minutes passed, he found it more and more challenging to focus on the task at hand, though. Piper kept having to brush the braid her hair was tied in back when it fell over her shoulder. Candy placement seemed to be critical to the vision she was developing, because her concentration became so intense as she lined the roof with alternating red and green M&Ms that her tongue began to poke out between her teeth. Jason was never sure when it happened, but eventually he looked over at her and Piper had a smearing of icing across her cheek. When he looked back not even a minute later, yet another smear had appeared, on the other cheek and almost identical to the first. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in those M&Ms he might have thought she’d done it on purpose.

Resisting the urge to wipe the icing from her cheeks proved very difficult. If he’d known her even a little better, had been in more than maybe three total conversations with her, Jason might have actually given in to it. She really was beautiful, too, even more so now that he stood just inches from her, close enough to see a small scar above her right eyebrow and make out the flecks of a blackish-brown in her irises.

These teams had been Piper’s idea. She’d _chosen_ Jason to be her partner, when she could have either opted to stick to the original teams and be with Percy or go with Annabeth’s initial suggestion of girls against boys. That realization brought his attention fully back to their gingerbread house – Piper had taken a risk on Jason and he would not disappoint her. He’d work to the last possible second to make their gingerbread house as good as possible before their timer ran out, snapping candy canes in half and carefully icing details on the house’s exterior as she directed.

Too many things were still left undone on the little, snow covered cottage he and Piper had managed to put together when the timer finally went off, but Jason still threw his hands up in surrender. During the entirety of the hour he had barely so much as glanced across the kitchen island to see what Percy and Annabeth were doing, but when he finally looked up at them, he discovered they were still rushing to put a few final details on their house despite the sound of the alarm ringing off the tile walls. Even more shocking than the disregard for their agreed to time limit was the fact that Annabeth had icing matted in her hair and Percy had somehow ended up with several gumdrops glued to his forehead. Jason wasn’t even sure how the icing was sticking so effectively to skin.

“Excuse you!” Piper shouted, launching an M&M across the kitchen with a surprising amount of force for how small she was. It hit Annabeth in the shoulder and she finally looked up from continuing to ice. “Time is up, you two. What happened to _not cheating_?”

Caught and rightfully repentant, Annabeth straightened up and tried to stifle a laugh. Percy, on the other hand, continued working despite Piper’s objections. It was only then Jason actually looked at the other pair’s gingerbread house, and his jaw dropped completely. They could keep working on it all night. Jason and Piper had definitely already won.

  


* * *

  


Over the course of the hour they were allotted to build their gingerbread house, Percy learned five things about Annabeth. 

First, and foremost, she was bossy. Like, quite possibly the bossiest person Percy had ever met, and he worked with a bunch of middle school teachers. It was kind of adorable on her, though. Percy could definitely imagine it getting annoying, infuriating even, but he still found himself enjoying the way she started ordering him around the very second the timer started ticking away at the start of their hour.

Second, despite being bossy, and despite the fact he was pretty sure she thought her opinion was the be-all-end-all of everything, she was actually very receptive to his input. The first time he made the most ridiculous suggestion he could think of, she had stared at him for several silent seconds and he’d expected her to laugh in his face. She _had_ laughed in his face, but not _at_ him. Annabeth had been genuinely amused by what he’d said almost entirely to get a rise out of her.

Which brought Percy to the third thing he’d learned about Annabeth – she had one of the most beautiful laughs he’d ever heard. He could try to describe it, but he knew any attempt would fail. It filled him with warmth and contentedness, and every time he heard it, he became more desperate to make her laugh again. It proved relatively easy for him to make her laugh. He supposed that meant he should tack on an additional point to that third discovery, Annabeth also had a really awesome sense of humor.

Fourth, she did not handle adversity well. That wasn’t to say she didn’t have the ability or the perseverance to power through, but as soon as they hit their first crisis, Percy had been able to see Annabeth buckling under the stress, growing irritable, icing covered hands combing through her hair anxiously and leaving sticky tangles in their wake.

Trouble had probably been in the cards for them from the beginning. Annabeth had suggested they try constructing a snow covered replica of the Empire State Building and Percy had been instantly on board with this absolutely outlandish, but very awesome, idea. His stupid suggestion had been trying to carve one of the gingerbread pieces into the shape of King Kong to hang off the side. Given more time, and cookies that weren’t a few days stale, they might have been able to pull it off. They had neither of those things, however.

With a lot of bossiness from Annabeth and very careful gingerbread placements, they managed to get three whole stories of cookie placed – the first was the widest and shortest, with a long and narrow second story, and a third with carefully shaved and rounded pieces. Percy was carefully applying a thin (as instructed) line of icing so Annabeth could place their fourth, tiny, story when the entire thing crumbled. Neither of them had really done anything to cause the collapse, but over half an hour of work went down the drain in a matter of seconds.

That was when Annabeth started to panic, trying to find some way to salvage the ruins. Percy didn’t think it was just because of the competition. They had managed to build something that was genuinely really cool, for one. He also kind of figured it was a matter of pride, though. Annabeth did shit like that for a living. It should have come easy for her, and yet she’d failed to make a simple replica of a building she’d probably built countless replicas of before over the years. Losing their silly little contest was just the gumdrop on top of a crumbled, gingerbread mess.

The other pair was so wrapped in their own project that they didn’t seem to notice what had happened at all, but Percy figured it wouldn’t have mattered even if they did. Piper was competitive enough that she would have just shit talked them over it and made the situation worse, rather than offering up extra time or something.

Annabeth looked like she was just about to cry when Percy decided he’d had enough. Not a single thought went through his mind. Percy grabbed the icing bag, squeezed a dot of it onto his forehead and then mashed a gumdrop into the spot and then tapped her on the arm. “It’s fine. I’ll be the gingerbread house.”

Her brow furrowed and Annabeth stared at him with the same strange, kind of worrisome, expression she had worn when he suggested the King Kong idea. Just like earlier, once she’d processed what he said, and what she was seeing, Annabeth burst into laughter. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she replied, not even the slightest hint of malevolence in her voice.

“Pipe some pretty designs on me, cover me in gumdrops, it’ll be perfect,” he insisted, placing another dot of icing on his forehead to secure a second gumdrop.

Tension began to drain from her expression and posture slowly, so Percy opted to go in for a third gumdrop. Annabeth laughed again, and then grabbed their second piping bag. A few seconds later he had three more gumdrops adorning his forehead, almost like a colorful candy circlet. 

“There, one of each color,” she declared, shoulders shaking as she struggled not to laugh out loud again. He really wished she would.

Time certainly wasn’t on their side, but Percy and Annabeth made the best of what they had after that. Percy went to work on his King Kong cookie while Annabeth tried to turn the rubble of their former cookie tower into something that resembled a snapped in half Empire State Building. In the scene they would try to create, Gingerbread King Kong would have successfully destroyed his target. It might have looked better if Percy could have shaped the gorilla cookie _before_ it had been baked, or if they’d had food coloring so he could decorate the jumble of a cookie with black icing instead of throwing a bunch of brown M&Ms on it and hoping it looked remotely recognizable, but at least they tried.

All of it culminated in Percy’s fifth and most dangerous discovery. Percy liked her. He still wasn’t sure what kind of _like_ he meant, whether he just found her fun to be around or if he actually was developing a very unfortunate crush, but there was no point in denying it anymore.

  


* * *

  


“Are you sure you aren’t mad?” Jason asked from the safety of the room he’d been sharing all weekend with Annabeth.

Once Jason and Piper had finally harassed Annabeth and Percy into giving up on their gingerbread monstrosity, the group had brought Thalia and Reyna in to judge the competition. Thalia tried to convince Reyna that the pile of broken cookies Percy and Annabeth insisted were a toppled Empire State Building should win on merit of creativity, but Reyna was a stickler for perfection. The quaint cottage with a red and green color scheme and plenty of icing details Jason and Piper had constructed won the afternoon.

Jason had expected Annabeth to be upset about losing, especially after her team losing _Capture the Flag_ the day before. She tended to sulk when she lost, to say the least. Instead she snapped some pictures with her phone of the mess she and Percy had made and cheerily joined in on a large group Christmas movie marathon that most of the rest of the cousins were already in the middle of.

“Why would I be mad?” she asked in return, glancing back at him in confusion as she patted her hair dry with a towel. It had taken her two showers to get all the icing out of her hair. Jason still didn’t understand how she’d managed to get so much of it in there to begin with.

“Because, you know,” he replied, gesturing wildly with his hands while he attempted to find the right words to explain without potentially setting her off. None came, so he settled for the hard truth. “You lost.”

“If the cookies had been fresh and stronger, we would have won,” Annabeth answered, shrugging Jason’s reminder off and returning to the task of taming her hair.

This was strange and unusual territory for Jason, and he sat in bed watching her with a newfound curiosity. She finished drying her hair and hung it back up in their attached bathroom, then continued with her nightly routine. Seeing her so at peace with that kind of loss was strangely refreshing. It made Jason happy to see her, inexplicably, happy. He just wished he could understand what had been so different.

“Did you enjoy the weekend?” Annabeth asked, once she had climbed into bed beside Jason and pulled the covers over herself.

Sleeping in the same bed as Annabeth hadn’t worried Jason ahead of the weekend, because, as he’d told Thalia, they’d done it before countless times over the course of their lives. Like a lot of things that weekend, though, Jason found himself surprised by how _normal_ it felt. He didn’t find himself excited or nervous about getting in to bed with her every night, but it hadn’t made him uncomfortable, either. Her sleeping habits didn’t really disturb him, either.

“It wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be,” Jason admitted, thinking both of the weekend as a whole and the curious discoveries he’d made about his best friend. “Did you?”

Annabeth pursed her lips, taking in a slow breath as she thought about the question. “Yeah, I did. A lot of your family is actually really great. I think I’ll be kind of sad when we finally quit this whole pretending to date thing and I won’t see most of them again.”

“You really like them that much?” he asked, more surprised by this than possibly anything else Annabeth had said or done that evening.

“I do,” she confirmed, sounding almost as confused by it as Jason.

Over the weekend Jason had warmed up to a few of the people who’d come for Christmas celebrations – one in particular who he was actively avoiding thinking about at the moment – but he couldn’t say he’d developed such a strong connection with anyone. Not seeing them again probably wouldn’t have been any skin off his back, even if he might have found himself wondering about them from time to time. As he studied Annabeth, though, he found a hint of longing in her expression, and Jason got the impression that in saying she would be _kind of sad_ , she had been making a massive understatement.

She didn’t have much in the way of family, at least not that she was close to. Annabeth’s parents had been divorced as long as she could remember. Her dad had remarried and moved to Virginia when she was in kindergarten and a year later her half-brothers had been born. Most years Annabeth made the trip to Boston for a Christmas reunion with her dad, his siblings, and her cousins, but she rarely saw any of them during the year.

Athena, Annabeth’s mom, technically lived in New York, but Annabeth hardly ever saw her, either. Work had always been more important than Annabeth. Even that weekend, over Christmas, Athena had been on a trip to DC for work, meeting people about various deals or whatever else Jason’s dad and the great state of New York required of her.

It made sense, he supposed, that Annabeth had found a special kind of joy in this weekend filled with family and friends. Their relationship might have been a farce, but for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, she’d been part of a family for the holidays. Jason’s family was weird, awkward, and messed up. It was still a family, though, one that had welcomed Annabeth into its fold willingly. Not anticipating how meaningful this weekend could be, and was, to her felt like a massive oversight on his part. Realizing it now made him wish he’d made more of an effort for her.

“We’ll still be friends,” Jason reminded her, reaching across the small space between them so he could take her hand. They didn’t do things like that often, holding hands or hugging, but it felt right to him in the moment. “If we’re still on good terms when everything is said and done, there’s no reason you can’t keep in touch with the others. I’ll encourage it, even, if anyone asks how I feel about it.”

“I suppose that’s a good enough point. Thank you,” Annabeth agreed, nodding as she looked at their joined hands. He could tell it still worried her, though.

  


* * *

  


After a day well spent, Percy actually felt tired enough that he thought he would pass out as soon as his head hit the pillow. When his head hit the pillow, however, Piper immediately rolled over beside him and propped herself up on an elbow. Even in the dark he could make out the taunting mischievousness in her gaze and he steeled himself for whatever was about to come out of her mouth and make him feel like ripping out every single hair on his head.

“Are you going to admit you think she’s hot now?”

Percy had a few options. He could fess up. It was true, he thought Annabeth was hot. Very hot, actually. He could also lie straight to Piper’s face and deny it. The last thing he wanted was to make an issue of the fact he clearly had a thing for someone so completely off limits (a fact that unfortunately only added to her hotness). Instead of either of those extremes, Percy opted to play dumb. That was something he’d always been good at.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, Pipes,” he replied, closing his eyes and adjusting himself in bed to get comfortable, as if he didn’t expect the conversation to drag on.

“Obviously I’m talking about Annabeth,” Piper said, not backing down. “You were doing a whole love struck puppy thing all evening after we made those gingerbread houses. It was _painfully_ obvious. If anyone one else in this family actually knew you, I’m sure they would’ve all noticed, too.”

Having been caught was uncomfortably embarrassing. Even if Percy could admit to himself he liked Annabeth, at least as an acquaintance, he needed to deflect. Piper would misunderstand the second he put his thoughts to words. “You were the one who spent like the entire day with her, and who decided we were doing the gingerbread house thing at all. Are you sure you’re not projecting?”

Piper wasn’t going to fall for that poor attempt at passing the buck. “Pretty sure I admitted she was hot already. That’s not the issue here. You need to admit you have a crush on her.”

“I definitely don’t have a _crush_ on her,” Percy denied, maybe a little too quickly, but whatever. It was true. He didn’t. “I’ve had like four conversations with her, Piper, and I’m not thirteen. _Crushes_ are not a thing adults have.”

“Crushes are absolutely a thing adults have,” she objected, her smile easier to hear than to see in the dark. “And you’ve never needed more than one conversation to decide how you feel about someone. You declared we were best friends for life after we shoved that frog down Nancy Bobofit’s pants and you decided the same about Grover the first time he let you copy his Latin homework. Four conversations is way more than enough for you to start crushing on her.”

Sometimes it was annoying to be known so well. His mom being able to read him was bad enough, but Percy also had to deal with Piper and Grover knowing just about every thought that ever crossed his mind before he’d even had time to process it himself. This was definitely something he hadn’t been able to process yet, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to process it at all. They would all leave the next day. Percy would see Annabeth maybe once or twice over the course of the entire next year. By the time he crossed paths with her again, whatever mess of feelings were currently brewing would have long dissipated.

“Those were very different decisions,” Percy argued, sighing out his nose and burrowing down further in bed and closing his eyes. “Obviously someone who helps you shove a frog down a bully’s pants is BFF material. That was just good sense on my part.”

“Awww,” Piper chimed, a sarcastic edge to the sound as she poked Percy’s bicep, “you think making me your BFF was good sense.”

“I’m currently reconsidering my judgment,” he teased back.

Since his eyes were closed, he felt Piper shift to lay back down rather than saw it. He figured that meant she was done with the conversation, but not a minute later she continued, “You know what I think about a lot, the older we get?”

Growing sleepier by the second, Percy just grunted and hoped she knew it meant he was listening.

“That poor frog,” she told him, a genuine sadness in her voice. “It didn’t deserve what we did to it. That little frog was innocent and we still put it down Nancy’s pants.”

Percy had literally never thought twice about the frog, but Piper sounded so distraught over it, he couldn’t resist piling on. “What if that frog had a wife and a bunch of little tadpoles waiting for it to come home?”

For several seconds Piper remained silent, then she huffed out her nose and once again rolled over to prop herself on her elbow. “Why do you assume the frog was a guy?”

“Why do _you_ assume the frog was a guy?” he argued back, fighting the urge to break into a smile at the reaction he got out of her. “Why can’t two lady frogs be married and have some tadpoles, Piper?”

“Because frogs don’t have artificial insemination,” she answered, very obviously biting back a laugh.

“Maybe they decided to have a threesome with a nice little gentleman frog to conceive their tadpoles,” Percy suggested, sounding much more serious about the matter than he had any right to be. “Or one of the lady frogs had the tadpoles before they met and the other lady frog loved them as her own just the same. There are plenty of possibilities.”

Despite the darkness, and the fact Percy wasn’t even looking at Piper, he could sense the gears in her mind working. This was a stupid conversation, but she was weighing his argument with the same severity someone might give grand philosophical debates. Percy did kind of love her.

“What if one of the lady frogs did the _Jurassic Park_ thing?” Piper finally offered, voice taking on an almost dreamy timbre. “You know, _life finds a way_. Lesbian frogs also find a way.”

“I think you might be on to something there, Pipes,” he agreed, nodding. “But I’m going to sleep now, before you give me weird dreams about lesbian frogs.”

Another sigh, this one half a laugh, and Piper flopped onto her back again. “You totally have a crush on her, though.”

“On the lesbian frog?” Percy asked, very proud of that smooth deflection.

“No,” Piper replied, an air of superiority in her voice. “You know who I’m talking about.”

He did know who she was talking about, but he wouldn’t validate the accusation with any further response. If he fell asleep thinking about Annabeth for the third night in a row, that was none of Piper’s business.

  


* * *

  


Sunday morning brought with it a seemingly never ending stream of goodbyes. Since Jason and Annabeth lived only a couple hours’ drive away, and his parents had played host that weekend, they decided to stay for most of the day. Well, Annabeth had very strongly suggested it, partially because she wanted to spend a little extra time with Thalia, and also because she had promised to help Beryl with a little of the post-weekend clean up and organization. Those weren’t really Annabeth-as-Jason’s-girlfriend things, they were mostly just Annabeth things. It really was obvious why his parents were so obsessed with her.

Almost all of Jason’s cousins and their significant others made an effort to say goodbye to Annabeth personally, something he found as fascinating as he had her confession to liking so many of them the night before. Even a few he hadn’t realized she’d even spoken to stopped to give her hugs and say they looked forward to seeing her again on New Year’s. He was equally surprised to discover she’d exchanged phone numbers and social media with several of them, promising to keep in touch. Jason himself had only come out of the weekend with one phone number, Nico’s, and he still wasn’t sure whether he intended to actually use it or not.

The strangest goodbye of all came in the late afternoon. Jason came down the main stairs after moving a box of Christmas decorations his mother had already decided to put away in storage just in time to watch Piper launch herself at Annabeth in a massive hug. Both women laughed, swaying from side to side as if old friends sad to have reached the end of a reunion. It was close to a minute before they finally released each other, and by that time Jason had joined the two of them and Percy at the base of the stairs.

“I’ll text you tomorrow once I have a chance to look at my schedule,” Annabeth promised, beaming back at Piper. They were still connected at the hand despite having ended their hug, swinging their arms idly between them.

Piper nodded, though she wasn’t smiling. Her nose was scrunched and her lips set into a pouty frown, an expression that only served to make Annabeth grin a little wider. “You get exactly twenty-four hours before I start hounding you, so don’t even think about ghosting me.”

“Seriously, she’ll hunt you down,” Percy offered, standing to the side and watching with a subdued, but clearly amused, smile of his own. “Might be a good idea to start working on the restraining order now.”

“If I need a restraining order against anyone, it’s probably you,” Annabeth quickly retorted, her smile unfading and her voice lightly teasing. Percy seemed to understand her tone, because he laughed, and then Piper dragged Annabeth into yet another bone crushing hug.

When they finally managed to pull themselves apart again, Piper moved to pick up her bag and sling it over her shoulder. Jason wasn’t sure what to say, but he was there and didn’t want to be rude, so he awkwardly stepped up and shook Piper’s hand. Almost as soon as he’d offered it, he started questioning himself. Shaking her hand seemed weird, too formal after how enthusiastically she had hugged Annabeth, but the idea of hugging her made him nauseous – nauseous in a good way, which Jason had never realized could actually be a thing.

“I guess I’ll see you on New Year’s Eve, partner,” Piper said, keeping hold of Jason’s hand far longer than an average handshake. It took him a second to get it, but she was dragging the exchange on to tease him, or maybe to challenge him. Whichever of them let go first would lose.

Jason refused to lose, so he didn’t try to retract his hand and nodded. “I’ll be there.”

“It is your sister’s party,” Piper replied, the frown she’d been wearing since he came down the stairs beginning to make way for a smile.

“She would probably kill me if I didn’t at least show my face,” he agreed, which was not an understatement. Thalia had threatened him with death for less. That, and he was sure she would have some kind of last minute errand she just _needed_ him to run for her when that night rolled around.

“Well, if you’re showing your face, I’ll make sure to bring my camera,” she told him, which sounded a bit like a threat combined with the playful narrowing of her eyes.

Apparently tired of the endless handshaking, Percy finally stepped forward and draped an arm over Piper’s shoulder. “Can we go now, Pipes? I want to make it home before it gets dark and the roads freeze over again.”

The interruption clearly startled Piper, who immediately dropped Jason’s hand, cleared her throat, and looked Percy. “Yeah, sorry.”

“See you both next week,” Percy added, waving the hand around Piper toward Jason and Annabeth before slowly directing his girlfriend toward the front door.

Watching them go made Jason sadder than he expected. Once the door had closed behind Percy and Piper, he looked at Annabeth and found her just as disappointed, with a frown on her face and her brow drawn together. Jason admittedly cared more about Piper leaving than Percy, but based on how many of his cousins Annabeth had become attached to, he wondered if maybe her melancholy was for both of them.

“You and Piper made plans?” he asked, trying to dispel the tightness in his chest.

Annabeth nodded, wrapping her arms around herself and turning to give Jason a tight smile. “Just lunch or something, nothing big.”

“When was the last time you had lunch with someone who wasn’t Leo, someone from the firm, or a client?” Jason replied, glad that the thought was enough to pierce through that strange sadness he’d been feeling.

“When was the last time you did?” she snapped back, though there was no force in her voice. If anything, she sounded almost concerned. Her tone reminded him of the day before, suggesting they leave their work for later.

That was a good point, and one he had no answer for. Jason shrugged, slipping his hands into his pockets. A few seconds later, his mom hollered for him from the family room where she’d been tearing down decorations all morning, and he was glad for the excuse to escape before Annabeth pressed him any further.

  


* * *

  


Being back in the city always made Percy feel more at ease. That feeling was compounded when his and Piper’s first stop was back at his mom’s apartment. It didn’t have the same air as Christmas Eve Day, but it was warm and familiar and still decorated the perfectly festive way exclusive to his mom. Next year Percy would tell his dad to fuck off. As much fun as Percy could admit he’d had at his uncle’s place, this was where he should have been on Christmas Day, with the family that mattered.

Grover and Estelle were on the couch together. They both had their Nintendo Switch out and Percy knew, from discussions over text with his mom, that they were playing a game they’d both received as gifts. Apparently they had done nothing but play together since about an hour after opening presents. Sally had even struggled to get them to eat dinner.

“’Sup, Perce,” Grover called from the couch, not looking up from his screen. “Hey Pipes.”

Always one step ahead, Piper hurried over to where Grover sat and leaned over the back of the couch to see what he was doing, resting her chin on top of his curly hair. “Percy has a crush.”

“What the fuck, Piper,” Percy shouted, giving her a firm shove as he passed by toward the kitchen.

“Percy said fuck,” Estelle announced, loud enough to be heard all through the apartment.

Sally was just in the kitchen, though, likely having heard everything first hand. She opened her arms to greet Percy with a hug, calling to her daughter over his shoulder. “And now _you_ said fuck, Estelle. Don’t tattle on your brother.”

“Missed you,” Percy mumbled, his face pressed into Sally’s shoulder. No matter how old he got, he still felt like a little kid when she wrapped him up in her arms. Sometimes he wished he’d never moved out, just so he could still have one of those hugs every morning.

“Did you have fun?” she asked, a smile in her voice as she swayed him gently.

He grunted the affirmative, the most he was willing to admit at the moment, but he had enjoyed himself, probably more than he had expected.

“And what’s this Piper was saying about a crush?” Sally continued, voice light and teasing. That voice was another thing that hadn’t changed no matter how many years passed – it had been the same way she poked fun at him when she realized he had a crush on Charles Beckendorf, one of the counselors at a summer camp he went to in middle school, and the same voice she’d used to taunt him about his crush on Rachel Elizabeth Dare in high school.

“It’s nothing,” Percy assured her, tucking his face a little more securely against her shoulder. “Piper thinks Jason’s girlfriend is hot and that I share the opinion, that’s all.”

“He _does_ share the opinion,” Piper chimed, entering into the kitchen and heading straight for the fridge. This place was as much her home as it was Grover’s, as it was Percy’s.

Releasing Percy from her hold, Sally grinned over at Piper, eyes dancing with mirth. “It sounds like the two of you had a _lot_ of fun, then.”

“I would have rather been here,” Percy said, leaving his mom’s side so he could go stick his head in the fridge along with Piper. He was happy to discover there was plenty of leftover ham, some of which he would be stealing before they left, but for the moment he opted for a can of Coke.

Piper pulled out a tub of mashed potatoes and then crossed to give Sally a quick hug of her own. “We did have fun. It turns out Percy is actually like the least cool one on _both_ sides of the family – well, with a few exceptions on Poseidon’s side.”

“But not on mine,” Sally agreed, planting a kiss on Piper’s cheek before sending her away to grab a spoon.

“I will concede that Mom and Estelle are cooler than me,” Percy said, tipping his can of Coke toward his mom in salute, “but there is no way I would ever so much as consider a few of my cousins cooler than me.”

Because Piper was a heathen and just generally disgusting, she popped the tub of mashed potatoes open and dug straight into them with her spoon, not even bothering to heat them up. With a mouthful of potato, she pushed herself up on the counter and took a seat. The sight made Percy smile. She’d done that very thing more times than he could count, cold mashed potatoes and all.

“Which of your cousins do you claim to be cooler than, Percy?” Sally asked, returning to the sink where she’d apparently been washing dishes when they arrived.

Percy joined her, grabbing a dish towel so he could dry after she scrubbed each dish clean. “I am, at the very least, cooler than Jason.”

“Nope,” Piper said without hesitation, the word garbled by her potatoes.

He didn’t even try to hide his shock and disgust at the implication it was even possible he might not be as he took a bowl from Sally. “Name a single actually cool thing he did.”

“Obviously, he helped me beat your ass at gingerbread house building,” Piper answered, needing to give it next to no thought.

“You two winning was a fluke,” Percy argued instantly, more defensive about that loss than he probably should have been considering how inconsequential it was. “Better cookies and a little more time, you two would’ve looked like fools trying to compete with the work of art we created.”

“We?” Sally interjected, eyebrows raised as she glanced between Percy and Piper on either side of her.

“Percy and Jason’s girlfriend, Annabeth,” Piper said before Percy could get a word in. “The one he has a crush on.”

Sally didn’t say anything else, but she did turn again to look at Percy. He didn’t like the look in her eye, and he had a feeling she would have a lot more to say on the matter before long. 

There wouldn’t be anything to talk about, though, Percy was sure of that. In a week he’d see Annabeth at Thalia’s party, probably say about ten words to her, if any beyond _hello_ , and then he wouldn’t see her again for months. For all he knew, she and Jason would break up and he’d never see her again at all. That thought did leave him a little sad, but he decided to ignore the feeling. Not seeing her would likely be for the best. 

No, it would _definitely_ be for the best.

  


* * *

  


After a long weekend so full of other people and sharing a room with Annabeth, returning to his apartment Sunday night left Jason feeling startlingly lonely. Adding to the loneliness he felt, the space was physically cold. He’d left the heat off while he’d been away, so he had to crank it up and hope it kicked in before the night became too frigid to overcome. The one bedroom in lower Manhattan was small and minimally decorated. Jason hadn’t bothered putting up any Christmas decorations, mostly because he was the only one who spent any time there. 

He dropped his small suitcase in his bedroom, but didn’t bother unpacking it yet. He texted his mother to let her know he made it home safely. He texted Annabeth the same. He made his way out to the kitchen and started up his coffee maker ahead of a long night of catching up on the work he hadn’t done the last two days. He jumped in the shower after that, a quick scrub down in scalding water, both to refresh after the drive home and to warm up.

By the time Jason finished in the shower, a pot of coffee had finished brewing. With a large mug filled, he headed back into his bedroom to grab his laptop and the files he’d brought home. This was how Jason spent most of his nights and weekends – alone at his desk, in front of a computer screen, doing the same things he did during the workday.

Jason hadn’t always been such a hermit. In high school he’d been a bit of a social butterfly, involved in sports and clubs and student government. College was a little less intense, but he’d still maintained a fairly healthy social life, between dating and study groups and his closest friends. After graduating he’d gotten wrapped up in his master’s program and working part time, slowly losing touch with people he didn’t see either at work, like Annabeth, or at school, like Leo. He’d managed to keep dating off and on, but even that had stalled out over a year ago after breaking up with his last girlfriend.

Worse than the death of his social life, Jason barely did anything for himself. Even Annabeth had her hobbies. She had an unhealthy obsession with Lego, especially the collector’s set models of famous monuments and landmarks, but also some of the bigger, more complex pop culture sets. For someone who didn’t care much about _Star Wars_ beyond casually enjoying the films, she sure had been excited when she finally got her hands on the Lego Death Star and Millennium Falcon sets. Jason, on the other hand, watched movies and TV, read books, and that was about it. He was downright terrible at setting time aside for himself.

The weekend had been like a vacation, accidentally releasing him from the constraints he’d forced himself into. It had been stressful, just because of the setting and expectations of his parents, but the quieter moments had also been rejuvenating in a way, and Jason already missed it. He missed the constant companionship of Annabeth and the awkwardness of trying to get to know his cousins, the ambient noise of other people and the simple knowledge he wasn’t alone. Without actively thinking about it, Jason pulled up his calendar and glanced at what he had planned. Thalia’s party was the only thing written in aside from work until March, and Jason rarely went out or did anything spontaneously. If it wasn’t on that calendar, he wasn’t doing it.

Before he could think himself out of it, Jason grabbed his phone. A few texts from Annabeth, Thalia and his mom were still unread, but he didn’t tap to open any of them. Instead, he went into his contacts, found the newest addition to that list of names, and sent Nico a text.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was MASSIVE, but i hope you enjoyed it!!
> 
> next update will be january 1st for new year's. see you then.


	4. New Year's Eve

“Please come,” Percy begged, _begged_ , sitting on the couch with Grover in the late afternoon of New Year’s Eve Day. “Please. Pretty please. I’ll owe you like, five favors.”

Grover was unmoved by the offer of such a debt from Percy, which didn’t come as too much of a surprise. Living several hours away meant Grover would not be able to easily cash those favors in. They were all but useless except on the rare occasions Grover visited the city. “I’m not inviting myself to your cousin’s party, Perce, and I already made plans for myself, anyway.”

“You wouldn’t be inviting yourself because _I’m_ inviting you,” Percy corrected, throwing himself limply against the arm of the couch.

“I thought you liked these people now,” Grover replied, sighing heavily.

That was true, Percy was no longer as opposed to spending time with his cousins as he had been back in November. They all seemed like pretty okay people. Piper had been with him at Thanksgiving and over Christmas weekend, though, and she would not make it to Thalia’s party until late because of some stupid training thing at her new job. Going alone had him anxious, partly because he didn’t know how well he would do on his own, and partly because he feared being on his own would make him drift dangerously toward the only person he’d developed a real rapport with – Annabeth.

“It’s just nice to have someone to save me from myself when I get bored,” Percy said, diverting his gaze in hopes Grover might not read his mind.

For someone generally very loving and considerate of other people’s feelings, Grover was being especially heartless that afternoon, because he remained completely indifferent to Percy’s plight. “I’m so sure that’s the reason and not your big fat crush.”

In the week since Christmas Piper had very helpfully filled Grover in on what she’d dubbed _The Crush_ – capitalization intentional, and used regularly in texts on the subject. The two of them united against him left Percy floundering for some defense against their teasing. He always came up short, and not being able to refute them confidently scared him. Thankfully his mother, at least, had decided to show him a little mercy after that initial conversation the night they got back to the city and never brought it back up.

“I just need some back up,” Percy admitted, setting aside his pride on the matter. He would not admit to having an actual crush, not even to Grover, but maybe he could admit to being worried what he felt had the potential to develop into one. Eventually.

“If I hadn’t already promised Beckendorf to meet him and Silena at Times Square, I would go,” Grover replied, his expression at least becoming sympathetic in response to Percy’s uncomfortable situation. “I haven’t seen them since I’ve been back in the city, though, and I’m leaving tomorrow night. You’ll be okay without me. Just find another one of your cousins and stick to them until Piper gets there, even if you start to get mind numbingly bored.”

Percy groaned, sinking further into the couch, until half his body was hanging off the edge of it. “I don’t even know which one I would stick to.”

“Bounce between them until you find someone you click with,” Grover suggested. It was easy for him to say. He’d been an awkward kid, and the target of a lot of bullying when they were young, but Grover had also been amazingly good at making friends, maybe even better than Piper. He could make friends anywhere he went, usually in just a few minutes, because he was genuine and kind, and people sensed those things. Percy did not share those qualities. He was sarcastic and grumpy and rarely got along with people before getting to know them, Piper and Grover being massive exceptions to that rule.

Somehow he got along with Annabeth, though, and he barely knew her. Talking to her had been strangely easy and Percy had spent a lot of time the last week thinking fondly back on the little chunks of time they’d spent together over the previous weekend. Sure, she’d declared him an enemy for life, and that probably shouldn’t have counted as _getting along_ , but it did. Percy wished he could have a few more enemies like that.

There was nothing else Percy could do, though. He would have to survive on his own until Piper got to the party, because he wouldn’t ask Grover to ditch their other friends just because he’d dug himself into the most ridiculous hole in history. 

An hour later, Grover left for the night. Percy sulked around the apartment after that, slowly getting himself ready for Thalia’s party. It hadn’t been his intention to spend any extra time on his appearance, but he still found himself standing in front of the mirror fussing with his hair. He didn’t bother putting on any special clothes, just one of his nicer pairs of jeans and a t-shirt that he double checked for stains and holes, but he did stop at the door on his way out to debate which jacket he looked best in. Annabeth probably wouldn’t even see him in a jacket – and then he kicked himself, because he wasn’t supposed to be dressing for _Annabeth_.

In protest of his own thoughts, Percy almost decided to forgo a jacket entirely. Then he remembered it was literally freezing cold outside, hellish traffic that night meant driving was a bad idea and he would be better off taking the subway to Thalia’s. He grabbed the sherpa lined navy blue jacket on the top hook and was out his door without second guessing himself.

New York City on New Year’s Eve was a magical kind of madness, with crowded streets and equally crowded subways, party goers pregaming and dressed to the nines ahead of a wild night of celebrations. Percy actually envied Grover going to the ball dropping with Charlie and Silena. For one, Percy hadn’t seen his old friends in a long time, despite all of them living in the same city. It had also been several years since Percy had bothered going to the event himself and, even though it was one of those things he thought was more for tourists and transplants than actual New Yorkers, he also thought next year might be time for him to finally go again. 

Next year he would be thirty. Next year he wouldn’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops for his dad’s family. Next year he wouldn’t be pretending to date his best friend. Next year he might be dating someone for real. _Next year, next year, next year_ , was all Percy could think about, but for all those thoughts, it was hard for him to picture what it would look like. The older he got, the more difficult picturing his future became. Soon he would be lost to the tide of time entirely.

It came as no surprise to Percy that Thalia lived on the Upper East Side, in the kind of apartment he’d always thought no real person could afford. From his understanding, Zeus and Beryl were a lot more generous with supporting Thalia and Jason than Poseidon had been with Percy, especially after Percy had decided not to study Marine Biology and join the family foundation. Just stepping inside the building, Percy suddenly felt under dressed. Maybe he _should_ have bothered to put more thought into what he’d worn.

Thalia’s apartment door was propped open when he got to her floor, the sounds of music and conversation spilling out into the hallway. Percy took that as an invitation to let himself in.

Though Percy was by no means late, walking in the door at just past ten, the party was already well underway. Thalia’s apartment, fairly spacious by New York standards, was filled with people occupying the open spaces of living room and kitchen, and Percy could see some were also milling about the hallway leading toward other rooms. No one paid him much attention when he stepped inside. In his first scan of the room, he noticed several familiar faces – the party host, Thalia stood out in the middle of the living room with hair freshly dyed a bright shade of purple; Percy’s cousins Nico, Bianca and Meg were scattered among the other guests along with their significant others; Thalia’s girlfriend Reyna was in the kitchen, pouring herself a drink.

Percy’s second sweep of the party revealed the person he’d actually been looking for, though. The first time he’d missed her because she was out on the balcony at the back of the apartment with Hazel and Frank, but when his eyes settled on Annabeth, Percy felt his heart do a little unwelcome flip in his chest. Her blonde hair had been left down, flowing over her shoulders in immaculate ringlets, and she had to have been freezing out there in nothing but a golden, glittery top and black jeans, but she looked amazing. He stared longer than he should have, taking in her smile and the way she nodded her head enthusiastically while listening to Hazel speak. Piper not being there to witness his moment of weakness was probably for the best.

No matter how much he tried to fight it, Percy had a sinking feeling Piper, Grover and his mom were right. His feet moved on their own, and Percy made straight for the back door, out to the balcony.

  


* * *

  


Jason had known to expect his sister to make him run some ridiculous, last minute errand, but he had not expected that errand to require him to drive out to Jersey City at ten o’clock and meet some random guy in a mall parking lot to pick up a karaoke machine Thalia had decided to buy from an online ad earlier that very day. Traffic leaving New York City had been rough. It was only going to be worse on his way back in, an all out nightmare that would likely result in him missing the first couple hours of Thalia’s party, if not more. That problem was exacerbated by the fact that the guy selling the machine showed up thirty minutes late, eating further into Jason’s drive time and allowing traffic even more opportunity to back up.

Frowning deeply at the estimated trip time on his phone’s GPS as he started out of the mall parking lot, Jason almost didn’t notice the woman walking down the sidewalk. Even after noticing her, he also almost didn’t recognize her, bundled up in a massive padded winter coat, beanie and thick scarf. Something, instinct maybe, made him do a double take, and on that second glance he got a good enough look at her face in his headlights to have him slamming on his breaks.

“Piper?” he called, not even waiting for his passenger side window to roll all the way down before he shouted her name.

She stopped and stared in confusion at his car, squinting through the dark to figure out who had just said her name. A small part of him worried she might not recognize him, but that was stupid. It hadn’t even been a full week since they last saw each other, and Piper and Annabeth had been talking all week. Piper wouldn’t have forgotten him, a thought that was confirmed not ten seconds later when she broke into a smile and hurried toward his car.

“Jason?” she asked with a startled laugh, leaning on the passenger side window ledge. Only her eyes were visible beneath her scarf, but the corners of them were crinkled and they were curved into little crescents that told him she had a smile on her face he very much wished he could see. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m on a stupid errand for Thalia,” Jason replied, waving the question off. “What about you?”

For a second she hesitated, and Jason thought she looked a little embarrassed, but in the end she simply rolled her eyes. “I got a job at the mall here and they had me doing this dumb training thing tonight. Leave it to some trash retailer to do _training_ on New Year’s Eve.”

He didn’t think that was anything to be embarrassed about, but decided not to linger on the subject when it had seemed to make her uncomfortable. “Are you headed to Thalia’s now?”

“Yeah, I was just on my way to the train station,” Piper confirmed, pointing a thumb over her shoulder in the general direction she’d been walking in before Jason stopped her.

“Do you want a ride? I’m going there now,” Jason offered, hand already on the switch to unlock his doors, a tentative smile pulling at his lips. The excitement he felt at the prospect should have given him pause, but it didn’t.

“Oh my _god_ , yes,” she said, her shoulders drooping with relief. A split second later Jason had unlocked the doors and Piper was climbing into the passenger seat. “Thank you. You’re seriously saving my life. I was not looking forward to that train ride tonight, with all the extra people, probably most of them half drunk. There are enough half-drunk people on that line on a normal night.”

The smile that had been pulling at Jason’s lips only grew as she spoke. Once Piper had settled into her seat, rolled up her window, and put on her seat belt, Jason started them on their way. “The train probably would have been faster, though. GPS is telling me to expect at least an hour, and I figure its estimates are a little bit behind reflecting real time traffic, so we’ll probably be lucky if we get there by midnight.”

“An hour or two with you in this car is significantly better than half an hour on that train,” Piper assured him, already beginning to peel off some of her bundled layers. “It’s also much warmer. Again, thank you.”

“It’s not a problem,” he told her, which felt a lot like an understatement. If anything, it was his pleasure. “You don’t do well in the cold, I take it?”

Piper shook her head, already having removed her beanie and scarf and beginning to wiggle out of her massive coat within the confines of her seat. Her hair was a bit of a mess from her hat, but she seemed unbothered by it. “I’m from Southern California. These cold Northeastern winters are the devil’s work, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I thought you grew up with Percy,” Jason countered in confusion. As far as he knew, Percy had never lived anywhere but New York City.

“I did,” Piper replied. She’d managed to slip out of that coat with a startling amount of grace despite its size and how little space she had to work with, and she started shoving it between her legs in front of the seat to get it out of her way. “My mom lives here, so this is where I went to school, but my dad used to live in Malibu and I definitely consider myself a Malibu girl at heart. Sunshine and beaches and mild winters are more my speed than snow and freezing rain.”

“And yet you choose to live here,” he observed. 

When he turned a street and found himself in bumper to bumper traffic with others trying to get to the city, he wasn’t nearly as frustrated as he would have been on his own. Being stuck in traffic for hours wasn’t so bad now that he had company. Jason even found himself hoping things continued to back up further, tacking extra minutes onto their already extended trip time. Not delivering Thalia’s karaoke machine after she made him take this trip to begin with _and_ getting to kill a few hours with Piper sounded like a win-win situation to him.

“These winters are a small price to pay to stay close to the people I love,” she said with a shrug, and then turned down the visor in front of her so she could begin taming her hat hair in the small mirror.

Jason could understand that feeling, even if he’d never lived anywhere else, and never really had the desire to move. “I get it. I can’t stand the cold, either, but I don’t think I would ever be able to leave.”

“Really?” Piper asked, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Percy always says New Yorkers were _born for the cold_ , hearty and tough. He once wore shorts to the store in the middle of a snow storm. I actually thought about killing him that day, it made me so mad.”

“Annabeth does things like that too,” he said with a sigh, flashing back to years of skirts on days when it was below freezing and jackets forgotten even when it was snowing. “Can’t say I ever thought about killing her for it, though.”

“You’re definitely a better person than I am,” she said, voice teasing and light, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her pop the visor closed again, then sit back in her seat.

Venturing a more direct glance at her, Jason found Piper looking at him, a small smile playing at her lips, and he was glad for the excuse of keeping his eyes on the road with how quickly he had to look away. The temptation to keep staring back at her would have been too strong if he hadn’t forced himself to turn his eyes back to the road, something he felt all too guilty for. He needed to get his act together, to control the warmth that had started to spread through his chest the moment Piper had mentioned how being stuck in the car _with him_ would be preferable to the train, to stop thinking every ten seconds about how pretty she was and how much he enjoyed talking to her.

Not once in his life had Jason acted so love struck over a woman who was taken. That had always been a deal breaker for him, something that turned him off automatically. He’d experienced the fallout of infidelity firsthand, watching his parents’ marriage almost fall apart after his father had been caught having an affair. They’d worked it out, though Jason still didn’t understand how or why, but the year they’d been separated had been hell for him, worse for Thalia, and very well might have killed his mother if it had ended any other way.

Piper was off limits. He knew any potential feelings he might develop for her had no impact on _her_ feelings toward him, and he didn’t think she would be the type to do anything to hurt Percy, based on their limited interactions. That didn’t mean Jason should tempt fate. After seeing what his dad’s affair did to their family, Jason had sworn he would never hurt another person that way, under any circumstances, and regardless of whether he was the one to be breaking the trust of a relationship or not.

Still, when he looked back at her a few seconds later, Jason’s mind flashed back to the giddiness their pinkie swear in his parents’ garden had inspired and he wondered if he had any say in his own feelings at all. “I really doubt that.”

  


* * *

  


Before Percy could get to the balcony, he was intercepted by Thalia. He hadn’t spoken to her much over the previous weekend, but knew Piper had spent a little time with her, so he smiled and pretended he wasn’t looking for the first opportunity to bolt.

“I never got to tell you thanks for holding Annabeth off during _Capture the Flag_ last week. We might have lost if she’d managed to get backup,” Thalia said, offering Percy a hand.

He shook it, surprised by how firm her grip was. “Technically I _did_ cheat to make that happen.”

“ _Technically_ I don’t care. We won,” she replied, wearing a massive grin. “Is Piper coming tonight?”

“She is,” he confirmed, flexing his hand to stretch it as he tucked it into his jacket pocket. “I think she got off work a few minutes ago, so she’s probably on her way to the train now.”

“Tell her to hurry up for me,” she told him, giving him a firm pat on the shoulder and starting toward the kitchen. “It’s nice to see you here, Cuz! Happy New Year!”

“Happy New Year,” Percy called back, breathing a guilt ridden sigh of relief that Thalia hadn’t wanted to stand around talking long. 

Unfortunately, the briefness of that conversation did nothing to help Percy, because when he turned back toward the balcony, he discovered Annabeth had already moved on. Only Frank and Hazel remained outside, wrapped around each other and staring out at the view of the city. Even if Percy’s entire motivation for going out hadn’t been to talk to Annabeth, he still wouldn’t have wanted to interrupt the couple now.

The best course of action would be getting some food in his system. Food would improve his mood and his judgment both. A hungry Percy was a dangerous Percy, that’s what Grover had always told him, and he had skipped dinner figuring there would be plenty to eat here.

It took him several minutes of weaving through other guests to locate the food table hidden away in a corner of the living room, but he was happy to discover the menu for the evening was simply pizza. He grabbed himself a paper plate and loaded up. While he really wished he wasn’t there alone, not having Piper or Grover by his side, silently judging how much meat he was about to consume as he piled four slices of meat lovers on his plate, was also a little nice. Percy had always respected their choices to be vegetarian and vegan (respectively), but it was not the lifestyle for him.

Once he had a satisfactory amount of food on his plate, Percy went after a drink. He at least knew where to find those, moving toward the kitchen while carefully balancing his plate without dropping anything. Plenty of alcohol and mixers had been prepared, but Percy had very simple tastes. A plastic cup full of ice and some Coke were all he needed to be content.

Percy was in the midst of pouring out a can of Coke over ice when someone joined him at the counter, reaching past him for a cup. As he waited for the fizz to settle, he moved a step to the left and grabbed a cup for the poor person whose arm was just too short to reach them. “Sorry, do you nee–”

Looking up at the person beside him, Percy’s words failed him. Annabeth took the offered up from his hand, her head tilting curiously to one side. “Thank you?”

“Yeah,” he replied, though it sounded more like a grunt than the actual word. It was only then Percy realized he’d had no idea what he intended to say to her when he wanted to approach her earlier. Too many more seconds passed before he finally found his voice again, clearing his throat and pointing toward the selection of alcohol on the edge of the counter. “Can I hand you anything?”

“No, but thank you, again. I’m not drinking,” Annabeth said, shaking her head and scooping some ice into her cup. She nabbed one of the small bottles of cranberry juice supplied as a mixer and opened it to pour over that ice.

“Stuck with designated driver duty?” he asked, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the idea of tart pure cranberry juice was.

Annabeth shook her head, bringing the cup to her mouth and taking a small sip. “I don’t really drink ever, anymore.”

“You don’t?” Asking might have felt rude if Percy didn’t find it so surprising. He tried to remember if he’d seen her drinking eggnog over Christmas weekend. When Piper had kissed her, he’d certainly figured both women were already a little tipsy. His memory of those nights wasn’t clear enough to be sure.

If the question had been rude, though, Annabeth didn’t seemed bothered by it. She shrugged, taking another sip and then leaning against the counter. “I’m not an alcoholic – not that there’s anything like, shameful about being an alcoholic or anything, of course. I just… don’t.”

Another party guest approached the counter and both Percy and Annabeth took that as their signal to move on, since they’d finished pouring themselves drinks and there was limited space. Percy was pleasantly surprised to notice Annabeth didn’t rush off in another direction, instead following along as he slowly moved back into the living room. It was crowded and loud, but he spotted a fair amount of open space on one of the two couches and decided that would be a good spot to hunker down and eat, and maybe continue talking with Annabeth.

“So is there a story there, or do you just not drink as a health thing?” Percy asked, once he’d taken his seat on the couch. She had joined him, settled at a polite distance beside him, but still closer than might have been normal between two people who were barely just getting to know each other. Her body was also angled toward him. He felt stupid for being so aware of these two details, and stupider for wishing she’d move just a little closer.

“Oh, there’s a story,” Annabeth replied, but, instead of saying anything, she else took another drink of her cranberry juice and purposefully averted her gaze.

Percy wasn’t sure he should press. It probably wasn’t any of his business, and from her expression he could tell they’d stumbled into some kind of awkward territory, but he wanted to know. He wanted to know why she didn’t drink, and why she became an architect, and what she liked to do in her free time, and every other possible thing there was to know about her. Hell, part of him even wanted to know about her relationship with Jason, if only because it was such an obviously important part of her life. Being reminded she had a boyfriend, that her boyfriend was his cousin, and that she could never be more than his friend sucked a little, but it didn’t suck as much as the prospect of never knowing the answers to all those questions.

“I think I’m going to need to hear that story,” he insisted, lifting his first slice of pizza and narrowing her eyes at her. “Not telling me at this point would just be cruel.”

“It’s embarrassing. Only two people in the entire world know it,” she told him, managing to turn her eyes back to him. 

The apartment’s lighting was low, intimate, and it turned her light gray eyes a much darker shade, the contrast between her irises and pupils almost nonexistent. All he wanted to do for the rest of the night was stare into them, something he hadn’t experienced since being a dumb, lovesick teenager – and there it was, confirmation, undeniable evidence that Piper and Grover were right. Percy had a crush, one that was dangerous and already much bigger than it had any right to be.

“We can make a trade,” Percy offered, being sure to chew his first bite of pizza thoroughly and swallow before he dared to speak. “You tell me this story, and I’ll tell you a secret of my own in return. Whatever your story is, I’ll make sure mine is at least equally as embarrassing, if not more.”

“An, _I’ll show you mine if you show me yours_ , kind of thing?” Annabeth asked, shifting slightly where she sat, crossing her legs. She was getting comfortable, settling in. Apparently she had no intention of going anywhere soon, and as a result Percy got one of his wishes. The movement had inched her just a hair closer.

“Something like that,” he agreed, flashing her a cheeky grin before he took another large bite of his pizza.

She took another drink of her cranberry juice as well, studying him closely over the rim of her cup as he chewed, and her unflinching gaze had his heart racing. “I guess three people knowing wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

  


* * *

  


After their initial, short conversation, Jason and Piper had fallen into a pleasant and companionable silence. The estimated trip time on Jason’s GPS continued to rise as they made very slow progress through Jersey City toward the Lincoln Tunnel. The only comfort Jason took in how stopped up traffic was on this side of the Hudson was knowing things would be significantly worse if he’d crossed over on the Holland Tunnel and tried to make most of the drive through Manhattan itself.

“Do have a cigarette?” Piper finally asked, her fingers tapping anxiously on the passenger side door, just below the window.

Jason glanced over and found her staring at him, a distraught expression resulting in her bottom lip being out turned. Instantly a smile was pulling at his lips again, not at her apparent pain, but at how ridiculously adorable she was. “Giving you one would make me a very bad influence,” he replied, but he dug a hand into his jacket pocket and procured the pack and lighter he still always kept on him, despite the fact he insisted he really was quitting.

“I doubt you’ve ever once been a bad influence in your life,” she objected, snatching the offered pack and lighter before he had a chance to take them back. “Thank you, though. I just really need one today.”

As much as he wished he could deny it, Piper was probably right. Jason had spent most of his life playing exclusively by the rules. Instead he focused in on her follow up. “Rough day on the new job?”

“Well,” she said, putting an impressive amount of annoyance into that single syllable word, as she extracted a cigarette from the pack and deposited it between her teeth, speaking around it, “my new supervisor is twenty-one years old, I’m being paid exactly twenty cents over minimum wage – _New Jersey_ minimum wage, by the way, which is fifty cents _less_ than new New York – and I have to work again first thing in the morning. So, yes, rough day on the new job.”

“Is it…” Jason started, hesitating when his brain caught up to his mouth. Once again, he glanced over at Piper, watching her roll down the window beside her and then light that cigarette. “I mean, tell me if I’m overstepping by asking, but why are you working there?”

Before answering, Piper took her first deep puff off that cigarette, holding it in for a few seconds before letting the smoke out in a thin, steady stream aimed toward the window. Jason was thankful for the line of cars completely stopped in front of them, because he watched her much more closely than would have been possible had they actually been moving – her eyes fluttered closed, her face relaxing, her lips pursed around the pillar of smoke she breathed, her delicate fingers holding her cigarette lazily. Just from the way she reacted to that first inhale, he could tell she hadn’t been kidding about needing that cigarette, and Jason was glad to have been able to provide it.

“I never graduated college,” Piper finally answered, opening her eyes again and flicking the ash off her cigarette into the car’s tray. “I love photography, and I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life, so I thought finishing my degree would be a waste of money. No one asks a photographer their education, they just look at portfolios and experience. I probably wasn’t wrong, because I doubt I would’ve had much more luck on the job front if I had graduated with an arts degree, but still. It’s a rough job market and all my experience is either working for myself or in food service and retail, so I’m kind of stuck.”

“Why did you stop working for yourself?” he asked, more comfortable moving forward with the subject since she’d offered her answer so willingly.

“It’s not so much that I stopped working for myself as it is people stopped hiring me,” she answered, giving him a small shrug and then taking another puff off her cigarette. “I guess I just didn’t market myself well enough or something. Once I’m settled in at Penny’s I’m going to regroup and try to get myself back on track. Frank and Hazel letting me do their wedding is seriously such a lifesaver. If nothing else, it’ll give me more recent shots for my portfolio, and I think I’m going to focus on weddings, rather than trying to be a jack of all trades.”

In the month and a half that had passed since Thanksgiving, Jason had forgotten about the fact Piper would be photographing Frank and Hazel’s wedding. September was still nine months away. By then, he and Annabeth would be done with their little dating charade. Not that it mattered, he reminded himself, because Piper would still be with Percy, and the opportunity that meant so much to her had nothing to do with him, either way.

Jason forced himself to focus on the then and now, not an event months away. “You enjoy weddings that much?”

“I do,” she said, voice a hint quieter, almost wistful, and she flicked more ash off the tip of her cigarette. “I know these days like half of all marriages end in divorce or whatever, but that also means half of them _don’t_ , and either way, that day is something special for everyone involved. There’s so much joy and love, just waiting to be captured, immortalized. The pictures I’d take would be hung in places of honor in the homes of the newlyweds and their families, and they’d be brought out on bad days and special occasions alike, just to relive those precious moments.

“For a long time I dreamed of being a photo journalist or something and changing the world with a single, groundbreaking, paradigm altering photo,” she continued, her eyes focused on the quickly dwindling cigarette between her fingers, “but these days I think it might be nice to change the world in smaller ways. Capturing the quiet moments, documenting the best aspects of humanity, making as many individual lives a little brighter as I can. It sounds lame when I try to explain it, I don’t know.”

Nothing had ever sounded less lame to Jason, so he was quick to shake his head. “No, I think that’s a really amazing thing to want to do with your life, kind of beautiful, actually.”

“What is it you do, again?” Piper asked, a shy smile tugging at her lips that made more of that warmth Jason had experienced earlier begin to spread to extremities. “I know you work in architecture, but you’re not an architect, right?”

“No, but, kind of,” Jason replied, smiling at the confused furrow of her brow at his non-answer. That was a question Jason had been getting since he first decided on his field of study. “Annabeth is an architect. She designs the buildings, comes up with all the little details and flourishes that turn them into something grand that people love to look at. There’s a fair amount of math, engineering and innovation involved in that process, but it’s still mostly artistic when you get right down to it.”

“I’m an architectural engineer,” he explained further. “We take the designs of architects like Annabeth and take them from a drawing on the page to an actual building that’s stable and functional in the real world. Architectural engineers do everything from figuring out where to place load bearing walls, to planning lighting and ventilation systems, to developing sustainability features, to actually going to sites and overseeing construction along with the contractors, all depending on what area we’ve decided to focus on. My specialty is energy and sustainability.”

Piper turned away, taking another puff off her cigarette and breathing another stream of smoke out the window. God, he could watch her do that all day and not even begin growing tired of it. “So,” she finally said, still staring out the window, “I’m kind of intimidated now.”

“Don’t be,” he told her, trying to hold in a manic laugh at the thought _he_ could be intimidating to _her_ , especially after she’d said all those astounding things about what she wanted to do with her life. “In fact, Annabeth would probably laugh in your face if you said that to her about me.”

“Yeah, because she’s even more intimidating,” Piper replied, laughing and, thankfully, looking back at him again.

Just about everyone was intimidated by Annabeth. Even after getting to know her, people still remained a little scared of her, as if they weren’t sure she wouldn’t someday come for their heads. Jason could understand why. He knew full well she could murder him and cover it up with no problem if she wanted to, but he also knew just how soft and vulnerable she was under that hard and carefully defended exterior, and how fiercely loyal and loving she was toward the people who mattered most to her. While he respected her deeply, and loved her just as much, it had been a long time since Jason had been properly intimidated by Annabeth.

“That didn’t stop you from kissing her on Christmas Eve,” he pointed out, still not entirely sure that had actually happened.

A smile that Jason could only describe as sly pulled at Piper’s lips as she faced back toward the window. “When the opportunity to kiss a hot girl arises, I never pass it up, whether she intimidates me or not. Maybe even _especially_ when she intimidates me.”

“You think Annabeth is hot?” Jason asked, eyebrows shooting up in surprise, both at the confession itself and how brazenly Piper had made it.

“Don’t you?” she challenged, quite obviously teasing him, and effectively, considering his face started growing hot as soon as she’d spoken the question. In her mind it would be obvious Jason thought Annabeth was hot, because Piper thought Annabeth was his girlfriend, and generally people considered their girlfriends to be hot.

Jason knew Annabeth was attractive. He’d always thought she was pretty, beautiful even, at least once he’d become mature enough to admit those kinds of things without thinking it was gross. Plenty of people had expressed the same sentiment to him over the years, usually right before asking him if he could set them up with her or give them her phone number. Calling her hot _himself_ was a whole different story, though. Finding someone hot required a level of attraction Jason wasn’t sure he could say he’d ever felt toward Annabeth.

Instead of lying or, worse, creating suspicion by being honest, Jason decided to dodge the question entirely and hope Piper assumed it was just because the answer should have been so obvious. “Does Percy know you think this?”

“Percy is well aware of my opinion on that matter, yes,” Piper confirmed, a new kind of smile playing at her features, one that made Jason think he’d stepped into some kind of inside joke. “Annabeth is also aware, by the way. And she thinks I’m hot, too.”

That was definitely news to him. “Does she, now?”

“Am I making you jealous?” she asked, finally putting her spent cigarette out. Jason wasn’t sure what to make of her tone, a blend of the same teasing playfulness and something more hesitant, a tad apologetic. If she had gone too far, it hadn’t been on purpose.

 _Yes, you are making me jealous,_ he thought, _but not for the reasons you’d think._

“Annabeth is her own person,” Jason replied, burying the hint of jealousy he felt away. “She’s free to find anyone she wants hot.”

The cars ahead of them began to move at a decent speed again, so Jason’s attention had to turn fully back to the street, but he could feel Piper’s eyes on him and had a sinking suspicion she saw more than he wanted her to. “You’re a bad liar.”

“It’s not a lie,” Jason insisted, but even as he spoke the words he knew he really had lied. 

Annabeth _was_ free to find anyone she wanted to hot, both because she was not actually his girlfriend and because being in a relationship wouldn’t mean she could no longer find other people attractive. Jason had never been so insecure as to feel threatened in his relationships by something as innocuous as his girlfriend expressing her thoughts about other people’s looks. The problem lay with Annabeth finding _Piper_ hot. Like a little kid not wanting to share a toy, Jason didn’t want his best friend to be into the same girl he was, regardless of the fact that said girl was entirely unavailable to both of them.

“I’ll remember this lie, Jason,” Piper continued, a smile in her voice. As much as he wanted to look over and bear witness to that smile, Jason forced himself to keep his eyes trained straight ahead.

  


* * *

  


“So, it was a few years ago, when we were out celebrating Jason finishing his master’s,” Annabeth began, heaving a heavy sigh, but not expressing any other reservations about telling her story. “A group of us went out and got a little crazy. I honestly hadn’t been that drunk in years by then – actually, before that, I think the last time I’d really gotten drunk was Jason’s college graduation – but it was a big night, and everyone was getting absolutely plastered, so I kind of gave in to the temptation to join in on the fun.”

“I’m excited now,” Percy replied, mostly to encourage her to keep going and assure her he was listening. “What beautifully stupid thing did you do?”

Annabeth scrunched up her nose and shook her head. “Oh, I did my fair share of stupid things that night, but this story, unfortunately, does not end with that single night. If it did, I’d probably be enjoying a drink or two right now.”

“My apologies for interrupting, in that case,” he said, eyebrows raised, and picked up his second slice of pizza to chow down on while he listened. “Please, continue.”

“The next day I had a terrible hangover,” she picked back up, the corners of her mouth twitching up into a smile when he shoved roughly half his pizza slice into his mouth. “That was to be expected, of course, but it was _really_ painful. I felt sick to my stomach all day, everything hurt, and no amount of painkillers touched the headache I was nursing. Some of it got better over the next few days, like the headache, but I continued to just feel ridiculously sick to my stomach and I barely had an appetite.

“Finally, almost a whole week later, I started having the worst abdominal pain I’d ever had in my life. I’d had my appendix out in high school, so I knew it wasn’t that, and I tried to tell myself it would pass given a little time and some ginger ale or tea. I went to work, acted as best as I could like I was fine, and did a pretty good job of it up until lunch rolled around. There was no way in hell I’d be eating anything with how much pain I was in, so I tried to get down a little water and hope for the best. That was when the puking started.

“At that point, even I couldn’t keep denying something was wrong,” Annabeth continued, beginning to really get into the story, her free hand flitting around to emphasize certain words. “I couldn’t safely get myself anywhere, so I tried calling Jason, but he didn’t pick up. I ended up having to call our other friend, Leo. He’s the first of the two people who know what happened that day, because he came to pick me up and practically forced me to go to the hospital instead of just trying to go home and sit it out.”

Percy was trying very hard not to interrupt her, enjoying the way she seemed to be getting lost in her own storytelling, but he couldn’t hold in the comment that popped into his head. “Yeah, _not_ going to the hospital at that point would have been a dumb move.”

“Shut up,” she replied without missing a beat, and without any real hostility, the smile that had been playing at her lips the whole time she spoke finally coming out in full force. “Leo and I get to the hospital, and I just sit there in pain for like three hours waiting to be seen. I tried convincing him to let me go like twenty times, and the fact that I was letting _Leo_ tell me what to do should have been a big red flag that something was really wrong with me, but I was too out of it from the pain to think straight. We finally get called back and the ER doctor is like, ‘Oh, it’s probably just _reproductive pain_ , but we should do a CT scan to be safe.’”

Again, Percy had to interrupt, but not to tease her this time around. The health teacher in him suddenly wanted to scream. “I’m sorry, did you just say he told you it was _reproductive pain_?”

“I love that you could tell the doctor was a man by that statement,” she said, her smile now accompanied by a laugh. “But yes, and he made it clear that the debilitating pain and all the vomiting would not require any medical intervention in that case.”

“Of course,” he agreed, laying the sarcasm on thick. When Annabeth laughed again, he just about melted into Thalia’s couch. “Those are totally normal things to be experiencing and not at all your body telling you something is very wrong.”

For a few seconds Annabeth didn’t continue, just smiled at him and let out a few more, quiet chuckles, but then she shook her head and took a deep breath to dive back in. “Needless to say, it was _not_ just reproductive pain. You see, over the course of the week while I’d been feeling so sick, I hadn’t noticed the fact that I hadn’t… well, I hadn’t had a bowel movement.

“It turned out I had a bowel obstruction, and my colon had apparently perforated as a result,” she explained, holding her hand up and narrowing her eyes slightly to silence any comments Percy might have been about to make about _that_ little development. Annabeth was a smart woman, because there was a lot he suddenly wanted to say again, but he held his tongue rather than risk her wrath. “Like six hours later they were rolling me into surgery and doing an emergency colectomy, which is where they cut a chunk of your colon out and sew it back together. The doctors told me after that it likely wasn’t my drinking the week before that had caused it, but alcohol really doesn’t help with digestive tract issues, and I probably did make it worse, quicker.”

When she reached that conclusion to her story, Annabeth took another, long drink of her cranberry juice. Percy watched her for several seconds, not sure what to make of the story, nor the subtle redness coloring her cheeks, just barely visible in the low light around them. She acted like this series of events were the most horrifyingly embarrassing thing that had ever happened to her, but to him it didn’t sound too extreme. People got sick. It could’ve happened to just about anyone, and surely happened on a daily basis. 

“You said your friend Leo knows, since he was the one to take you to the hospital,” Percy finally replied, curiosity finally getting the better of him, “but who’s the other person?”

“Jason,” Annabeth answered without hesitation, confirming Percy’s unspoken suspicion on the matter. “Like I said, I’d called him first, so once he got the messages he rushed over to the hospital, too. He and Leo were there the whole night waiting for my surgery with me, and for most of the day after. I don’t think either of them even slept. Or ate, for that matter, at least until after I came out of the operating room.”

Percy spent a few more seconds studying her, the grumpy frown on her lips as she shared those subsequent details, and he was speaking his next thought to words before he could think better of it. “Is that why it’s so embarrassing for you, because they were there taking care of you?”

The question gave Annabeth clear pause, and she spent a few seconds studying Percy back, her eyes scanning his face and her expression guarded, as if she were weighing what she wanted to say next heavily. He might have been worried he’d overstepped, but she didn’t look upset – more curious, cautious, but also a little impressed. There was a distinct possibility he was reading her wrong, of course, that he didn’t know her well enough to tell the difference, and that the poor lighting and noisy surroundings were skewing his perception, but he didn’t think so.

“It is,” she admitted, breaking her eyes away to look down at her cup. “After the surgery I couldn’t really take care of myself, either. I could barely get out of bed to walk to the bathroom on my own for weeks, let alone make meals, or go to the store, things like that. Jason let me stay with him for about a month and a half until I was cleared to go back to business as usual. He basically did everything for me. Not once did he complain about it, either, not even when I puked all over my comforter and he had to clean it up, or when he had to rush me back to the ER because I’d popped a stitch trying to do something I wasn’t ready for.”

Since his first crash course in his father’s side of the family, Percy had admittedly made a lot of snap judgments about who his cousins all were. Jason had seemed like the epitome of stuck up and privileged, the kind of guy Percy would have hated in high school, and college, and probably still to that day. The last two family functions hadn’t done much to change that opinion, and Percy had found himself wondering, despite his best attempts not to, what someone as interesting and impressive as Annabeth might see in a guy like _that_.

He understood it now, though, and he realized for the first time those snap judgments had been entirely unfair. Jason probably had lived a pretty privileged life, and Percy still wasn’t entirely sure the guy wasn’t kind of stuck up, but it took a pretty intense degree of selflessness to go that extra mile for another person. It took a lot of love, too.

“Is that when you two started dating?” Percy asked, also averting his gaze when he asked the question. The dregs of food on his plate were much more interesting to him than whatever expression Annabeth might wear talking about her relationship, probably the only expression of hers Percy wasn’t dying to analyze and memorize.

Annabeth laughed, though. “God, no. Once I could go home, I could barely stand to talk to him for like three months, I was still so embarrassed over how helpless I’d been. Us dating is… Well, it’s new.”

Something in her voice drew Percy’s attention and he looked back up at her again, a question on the tip of his tongue that never had a chance to be spoken, and that he forgot about almost immediately after. As soon as he’d opened his mouth, Thalia jumped on the coffee table in the middle of the living room and called for everyone’s attention. Both Percy and Annabeth started, turning to stare up at Thalia’s frighteningly wide smile.

“First off, I want to thank everyone for coming tonight and wish you all an early Happy New Year,” Thalia told the crowd, once the music had been turned down and everyone had circled around to hear her speak. “Secondly, I’m happy to announce my brother is on his way right now with a very impressive second hand karaoke machine that we will be putting to great use tonight. Which is to say, if I catch anyone – and I mean _anyone_ – not kissing when the clock strikes twelve, you’re going to owe me a song of my choosing, and I will be collecting before you’re allowed to leave. Don’t think I won’t bar the door to make it happen.”

Reactions from the crowd were mostly positive, the announcement met with more cheers and laughter than anything else. Percy watched Thalia make eye contact with Annabeth across the room and carefully mouth the word _anyone_ in a playful taunt, and then she hopped off the table and disappeared into the mass of guests already returning to whatever they’d been doing before her interruption. 

When Percy looked over at Annabeth again, she was in the midst of finishing off her cranberry juice in a quick shot that left Percy even more confused, an eyebrow raised. “What was that about?”

“Thalia has enjoyed giving Jason and me a bad time since Thanksgiving. That’s why she pulled the thing with the mistletoe on Christmas Eve, too,” Annabeth replied, shaking her head and growing plainly uncomfortable. She held up her cup, shaking it so the ice in it clanked together. “I’m going to go get a refill.”

Percy didn’t get a chance to say anything else before Annabeth shot to her feet and disappeared toward the kitchen, leaving him speechless and worried he’d said the wrong thing when they’d had such a great dynamic going. He hadn’t even had a chance to repay her for the embarrassing story.

  


* * *

  


Traffic had, yet again, come to a halt. They were approaching eleven and only halfway to Thalia’s. Jason wondered what the point of the karaoke machine could even be, considering it was going to arrive to her party so late. To make his life difficult, he decided, that had been the point of the machine. His sister was playing an elaborate prank on him. It could also have just been so she wouldn’t have to see him with Annabeth all night, because Thalia had made it clear in the week since Christmas that she was even less on board with their little lie of a relationship than she had been at the beginning.

“Apparently your sister has instituted a kissing rule for midnight,” Piper reported, her phone screen lighting up her face as she read a text message Jason assumed must have been from Percy. “Apparently not kissing someone at midnight results in the punishment of singing a karaoke song of Thalia’s choosing?”

There it was, the purpose of the machine, why Thalia didn’t need it before midnight, and evidence she was trying to make his life difficult all rolled up into one simple message. She was laying a trap. If Jason didn’t kiss Annabeth at midnight, everyone would know, and it would raise plenty of questions. Thalia probably wouldn’t even be paying attention to anyone else, just lying in wait to expose Jason and Annabeth when they failed to lock lips.

“Percy wants to know if we’re going to make it by midnight or if he should hunt down an alternate kissing partner,” Piper continued, unaware of Jason’s current plight. “We’re going to make it, right? The GPS says forty-five minutes.”

“You’re okay with him kissing someone else?” Jason asked, too distracted by that idea to think clearly about how much longer it was going to take to get to Thalia’s.

Piper snorted a laugh. In the time they’d been on the road she’d made herself very comfortable in Jason’s passenger seat, sinking further into it until she was practically hanging off the edge. She’d asked before putting her feet up on the dashboard, which Jason appreciated, but he didn’t care about that kind of thing and told her to go for it, so she did. Watching her make the space her own had been a fascinating experience and the way she now hunched over her phone while texting Percy made Jason’s chest tight, just because it was so oddly cute.

“It’s just a New Year’s kiss,” she explained, not looking away from her phone. “Not having one would suck, anyway, so he should do what he’s got to do to survive without me.”

“Sounds like you expect to die tonight,” he teased, his mind once again thrown into a whole new mess by her response. Not a single thing that came out of her mouth was predictable to him. To answer her question, though, he focused on the display of his GPS. “We’ll probably be cutting it close, but I think we’ll manage to make it.”

Pursing her lips and humming, Piper’s thumbs flew over her phone screen as she typed out a hurried message to her boyfriend. “Maybe we should come up with a midnight contingency, too. Just in case.”

If the car had been moving, Jason probably would have ended up slamming on the breaks. Wide eyed and stunned to silence, he stared at Piper, trying to figure out if she meant what he thought she meant. A midnight contingency between the two of them could only mean one thing, though, especially after what she’d said about not having a New Year’s kiss sucking. Suddenly his heart was in his throat, pounding, his face was growing uncomfortably warm, and his eyes flicked back to the GPS so he could once again try to gauge how the timeline would play out. Nothing would compute. Jason’s brain had short circuited.

“Or not,” Piper replied, letting out an adorably bright laugh when she glanced back up at Jason. “Oh my god, I didn’t know people could turn that red. Are you okay?”

Being caught only made his face burn hotter and Jason quickly looked away, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, I just– I mean– You know, you’re–” 

His brain was still entirely fried and no sentences would form to explain the torrent of thoughts going through his mind, or how badly he wanted to say, _Sure, let’s make that contingency plan._ And then maybe purposefully not make it back to Thalia’s party in time.

Jason was going to hell.

“I told Percy we’ll probably make it back, but to be prepared for the worst,” Piper said, still giggling softly even after she’d focused back on her phone. “Don’t worry, I won’t ambush kiss you the way I did Annabeth.”

“Well, I’m not as hot as she is, so I wouldn’t expect you to,” he managed to get out, proud of himself for forming an entire, complete, and intelligible sentence despite the fact that his brain still felt like it ought to be smoking. With a deep, steadying breath, he felt a little more in control of himself, aside from the fact that he suddenly wanted a cigarette more than he had all week, or maybe in all his life.

When Piper didn’t reply right away, Jason ventured another glance in her direction and hoped it wouldn’t set him off all over again. Big mistake – she was staring him down, eyes slightly narrowed, the corners of her lips tugging upward, and that intensity sent his heart right back up to his throat. Piper looked away after a couple seconds of purposefully maintained eye contact and she said, softly, “If you say so.”

Jason definitely needed a cigarette, and so he pulled his pack out for the second time that night.

  


* * *

  


_A contingency plan._

Percy kind of wanted to strangle Piper, especially for the chain of taunting emojis that had followed the text of her message telling him she might not make it and he’d need to figure out how to avoid Thalia’s punishment without her. While he wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to kiss Piper, that would definitely be the better option in comparison to what those texts implied. If Piper didn’t make it by midnight, Jason wouldn’t make it by midnight, and if Jason didn’t make it by midnight, there would be someone else at that party also scrambling for a kiss.

The someone in question had disappeared after Thalia’s announcement and not reappeared. Percy tried not to take it personally, but he kind of wondered if Annabeth wasn’t avoiding him on purpose. No matter what Piper said, though, Percy wouldn’t be suggesting anything to Annabeth. He would suffer through whatever embarrassing song Thalia made him sing long before he so much as considered crossing that line. Having a crush was one thing, innocent, forgivable. Actively pursuing that crush was another.

Thalia’s apartment wasn’t _big_. Once Percy had finished off the last of his food, he’d wandered back into the kitchen to toss his plate and cup and then returned to mingling in hopes of running back into Annabeth. She wasn’t on the balcony, or in the living room, or in the kitchen, at least not at any point he was in those places. People went in and out of the bathroom, so she hadn’t holed up in there. When that thought crossed his mind, Percy decided he was being kind of stalkerish and switched to actively _not_ looking for her, instead seeking out other people he knew among the crowd.

That had been mistake number one of what would be, over the course of the next hour, three critical mistakes.

Seeking out others had resulted in Percy approaching his cousin Hazel and her fiance Frank. Just talking to them in and of itself wasn’t his mistake. They seemed like cool enough people. The first few minutes of their conversation was a little on the awkward-and-too-polite side, but still not forced or insincere. Maybe that, the relaxed nature of their single conversation, was what inspired Hazel’s idea. Or, more likely, it was the fact that Piper had been a brilliant and bold social butterfly the weekend before.

“You know,” Hazel said, her eyes lighting up as she glanced to Frank, “we’re having a Valentine’s Day brunch next month. You and Piper should come.”

“I don’t think Piper and I are really the brunch types,” Percy replied, trying to remain polite. His actual concern was the fact that they weren’t actually a couple, and he had the feeling Piper, at least, would want to have a real date on Valentine’s Day.

“It would be so much fun to have you, though,” Hazel insisted, just the right side of pushy not to be annoying. Despite the fact that Percy barely knew her, he could tell she was only trying to convince him because she genuinely wanted him there, and he could admit it felt nice to be _wanted_. “In the past it’s always just been Bianca, Nico and me with our dates, but Bianca is going to be on tour with her symphony this year and we thought it might be nice to branch out to the rest of the family after the last couple holidays. We’ve already convinced Jason and Annabeth. You and Piper should come, too.”

Had Hazel not mentioned Jason and Annabeth, Percy might have continued to let her pleas roll off of him. Those names – well, mostly _her_ name – had much more power over him than they had any right to. “I’ll have to check with Piper, but sure. We can probably do brunch.”

Brunch. On Valentine’s Day. With the woman Percy definitely had a crush on. And that woman’s boyfriend. Percy’s cousin. Great.

A few minutes later, kind of panicked over the fact that he was so obviously losing his mind, Percy excused himself under the guise of needing to use the restroom. One toilet for a party of that size meant a pretty long line, but Percy didn’t mind standing in it, even though he didn’t actually need to go, just for the excuse to get himself back together. Nobody was going to talk to him in line for the bathroom, or so he thought.

“You don’t have to wait in this line, you know.”

After trying so hard to find her in vain, and then trying so hard _not_ to find her, Annabeth was suddenly right there beside him. Percy didn’t try to hide how startled he was by her sneaking up on him and Annabeth laughed at his obvious reaction. Her ease and friendliness made him question whether she’d actually been avoiding him at all. It wouldn’t have been the first time Percy had been too in his head over something like that, and he doubted it would be the last.

“Are you suggesting I cut?” he asked, eyebrows raised, once he’d recovered from being startled.

“I’m suggesting there’s a secret bathroom for friends and family,” Annabeth told him softly, just loud enough for him to hear over the ambient noise of the party around them without being overheard by the guy beside Percy in line. Without another word, she pointed down the hall and then started walking away.

Following her was mistake number two.

Annabeth led him to the end of the hall and into what he assumed was Thalia and Reyna’s room. The door had been locked, but she had a key, and she waved him inside before pointing out the en suite bathroom. Percy decided not to bring up the fact that he hadn’t needed to go the bathroom at all and just went straight in with a quick and quiet thanks.

When he came back out, Percy found Annabeth shuffling her feet, arms crossed, as she stared at a framed photo on a shelf toward the back of the room. With a door between them and the party, it was much quieter than the living room had been, though he could still hear the muffled sounds of music and jovial, half drunken conversations from outside. It felt like they’d stepped into an alternate universe. Percy wished they really had – a universe where she was not in a relationship with his cousin and he was not pretending to be dating his best friend, a universe where he could kiss her at midnight and there would be no unfortunate consequences.

“Is Thalia going to be upset I’m like, in her room?” Percy asked, trying to put those dangerous thoughts out of his mind.

She turned to look at him and they all came roaring back louder than ever. “No, Thalia’s fine as long as you didn’t make a mess or anything. I’ve actually been looking out for cousins in the bathroom line all night, per her instruction.”

Slipping his hands into his pockets, Percy moved slowly to where Annabeth stood, stopping about a foot away from her. “Does that mean you didn’t just break the rules for me?”

“I never break the rules,” Annabeth replied, not taking her eyes off him.

“That’s what you want people to think, but I don’t believe it for a second,” he said, breaking his eyes away from her to look at the photo that had held her attention before he’d come out of the bathroom. 

There was no need for him to ask who was in it – even though they were all at least twenty years younger, Percy recognized Annabeth, Jason and Thalia, the younger two covered in dirt and scrapes, and a pre-teen Thalia with her arms hooked around their necks, all three beaming at the camera. They really had known each other forever.

“You’re free to believe whatever you want,” she said lightly, still watching him so closely Percy started to feel self conscious. He should have checked what he looked like in the mirror before coming out, made sure there was no food in his teeth or something equally embarrassing.

The thought of being embarrassed reminded him of the whole reason he’d been looking for her earlier in the first place. “I owe you a story.”

“True,” Annabeth agreed, finally turning away from him again. “I’d be willing to make you a different trade, though, save you the embarrassment of telling me one of your deep, dark secrets.”

Percy didn’t quite know if he minded sharing an embarrassing story with her, and he had plenty to spare, but curiosity had his heart racing. The desire to know what she might be thinking kept him from arguing. “What kind of alternate trade did you have in mind?”

“I hate karaoke,” she told him, and that already racing heart of his kicked into an even higher gear. “If Jason and Piper don’t make it by midnight, want to make sure Thalia doesn’t get to torture either of us?”

“Jason wouldn’t mind?” Percy asked, unable to look at her. Making eye contact in the midst of that conversation felt way too dangerous. Either he would snap and let something slip that he shouldn’t or she would see right through his poor defenses and figure out exactly what he was thinking – that he wanted to kiss her so bad it was making his hands shake within the confines of his pockets.

“He’s not really the jealous type,” she replied, also keeping her eyes trained straight ahead. “Piper wouldn’t mind either, right?”

“She already told me to do what I have to do to save myself,” he said, trying not to sound annoyed by the fact that his best friend was throwing him to the wolves this way.

Annabeth fell silent for what felt like a hundred of Percy’s accelerated heartbeats, and he wondered if she felt just as much tension as he did. “Should we make the deal, then?” she finally asked, turning her head toward him again.

Instinct screamed for him to say no, to walk away and suck it up when Thalia eventually called him out at not being kissed at midnight. If Annabeth didn’t kiss him, she’d just kiss someone else, though. She clearly intended to avoid Thalia’s punishment at all costs. Agreeing to the kiss would be doing her a favor, and if Jason wouldn’t mind it, there was nothing to lose. Piper and Jason would probably be back by midnight, anyway, so this was all going to be for nothing, a funny story to look back on later, the time they _almost_ kissed at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

“I think we should.”

“Good,” Annabeth replied, pressing her lips into a tight, controlled smile, but a smile nonetheless. With that decision made, she crossed back to the door, headed back out to the party, but she stopped to glance back at him one last time before she left. “See you at midnight, Percy.”

  


* * *

  


Time seemed, at once, to not move at all and to move too fast. Jason kept his eyes on the clock, counting each minute, and yet he felt like he blinked and half an hour had passed. They were inching toward midnight and inching toward Thalia’s, the slowest race in all of history, and the worst part was that Jason didn’t know whether reaching their destination on time would be winning or losing.

His cigarette had only marginally helped to ease his frayed nerves, mostly because the whole time he’d been working through it he could feel Piper’s unnerving gaze on him. It flashed him back to that afternoon in the garden, when she’d snapped those pictures of him that she’d apparently liked too much to be willing to delete when he asked. He wondered if she’d spent any time looking at them in the week since then. Photographers usually did some editing to their pictures, so she must have. Jason wanted to see them, maybe even understand a little of what he looked like through someone else’s eyes. More importantly, he wanted to know what he looked like through _Piper’s_ eyes.

All his life, Jason had been obsessed with how people saw him. In some ways, that had gotten better as he grew older, but in other ways it had only become worse. Those pictures Piper had taken were candid, capturing a moment when Jason had assumed he was alone, no thought in his mind about being one thing or another for the people around him. He wondered if that was why she liked them, because they’d caught something authentic and simple.

“Do you think you could send me those pictures you took last weekend?” Jason finally asked into the silence that had once again settled warmly between them.

“Sending them to you might be risky,” Piper replied without missing a beat, as if their conversation had never petered out to begin with. “They’re more likely to end up in unauthorized hands if I let even you have copies, and I made a pinkie swear to keep those pictures a secret. It’s important that you know I take pinkie swears very seriously.”

That made no sense, and Jason was pretty sure Piper knew as much, based on the tone of her voice and the impish grin she wore. “So I can’t have copies of pictures of _myself_?”

“Not at this time,” Piper told him, a playful severity given to those words. “I might be able to trust you with them once I get to know you a little better, but until then, they’re for my eyes only.”

“You intend to get to know me a little better, then?” he found himself asking, taken aback by the thought she might. Piper and Annabeth had hit it off over Christmas and had already had lunch together once in that week between the holidays, but that didn’t involve _him_ , not directly anyway.

“A little,” she confirmed, leaning over the center console just enough to nudge him gently with her elbow, and not breaking eye contact as she settled back into place after. “At least enough that you won’t be terrified by the prospect of a little midnight kiss next time we find ourselves in this predicament. This is going to be the first year since I was twelve that not a single person around wanted to kiss me.”

Jason could admit to himself that he wasn’t good at picking up social cues most of the time, but there was a split second, with Piper staring over at him and the break lights of the car ahead of them reflecting off her dark eyes to make them glow a fascinating and menacing red, that he thought she was actually _flirting_ with him. In those brief seconds he decided that was just the kind of person she was, flirtatious, playful, that the impression he got didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything. He wouldn’t let it mean anything, even though he really wanted to.

Two things became immediately apparent to him – this car ride was becoming increasingly dangerous and they had exactly twenty minutes to get to Thalia’s before midnight. The GPS told him traffic had all but stalled, and it had jumped from a ten minute trip estimate up to fifteen. They were _so close_ , but they weren’t going to make it and, when the clock struck midnight, he worried the car would become an even less safe place for him to be.

Figuring out a solution to this problem became top priority, Jason scanning the street while his mind reeled. They were close enough to walk, if they hurried and Jason didn’t drop the stupid karaoke machine on his way, and walking would probably get them there in time. Parking was the issue, though, and would be an additional hurdle between them and making it up in time once they actually arrived at Thalia’s building. On a normal day that area of Manhattan was impossible to park in. The holiday and timing would make it even more impossible.

They needed a miracle. _Jason_ needed a miracle, to save him from himself.

A miracle was what Jason got, in the form of what looked like a couple on the verge of a break up storming to their car down the sidewalk. He tried not to take joy in what their terrible night had given him, but the relief he felt watching the pair climb into their car and turn on their blinker to try and get out of there was too intense to deny. It would still be tight, but he and Piper might actually make it to the party just in the nick of time.

“What do you think about snagging that spot and walking the rest of the way?” Jason asked Piper, pointing to the car in question. He had already stopped to let them out, but that didn’t mean he had to take the spot. If the few blocks they still had to go were too much for her in the cold, he’d just have to figure something else out.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste at the prospect, but nodded. “Sounds like a good idea. We probably won’t find another spot tonight, anyway.”

Not five minutes later they were parked and climbing out of the car, Piper bundling herself back up in a flash and Jason heading around to the trunk to unload the karaoke machine. She offered to help him with it, and he let her take the small cardboard box of microphones and CDs, but the main bulk of the machine was a one man job. It slowed him down, but Jason was intent on making it to that party before time ran out.

Piper would get the midnight kiss that meant so much to her. The kiss would come from her boyfriend, though, as it was supposed to.

Jason did not consider that a kiss waited for him up in that apartment as well.

  


* * *

  


As the clock ticked toward midnight, Percy remained hyper aware of where Annabeth was in the apartment. He had a nice conversation with Nico’s boyfriend Will, but his eyes were almost always on her – watching her help Reyna pour flutes of champagne and sparkling cider, tracking her movement when she crossed the room to ask Thalia something, wondering when she would finally come to him to collect on the debt he owed her. The prospect was equal parts terrifying and thrilling.

Percy’s terror came in the form of waves of guilt. Since the moment he’d agreed to her proposition, he had started to doubt himself. Not once in his life had he kissed another person’s girlfriend (or boyfriend). He could practically hear his step-siblings in the back of his mind, making snide remarks about the apple not falling far from the tree or some stupid shit like that. They weren’t at Thalia’s party, though, and Percy reminded himself he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Jason was aware of what was happening. At least, Percy assumed Annabeth would have looped him in before asking. Piper wasn’t even Percy’s actual girlfriend, but even she were, she was aware of, and consenting to, the plan. Percy had nothing to feel guilty about.

Except he would be accepting the kiss under false pretenses. Annabeth thought he was in a relationship, and therefore would think the kiss didn’t have any more meaning than a trick to avoid Thalia’s punishment. In reality, Percy was single, and he had what he was beginning to worry might actually be a very big crush on her. He should tell Annabeth the truth before midnight came, fess up to his lies and pray she would keep the secret for him – or, more likely, Annabeth would keep the secret for _Piper_ , and think he was an absolute creep.

None of those things ate into the thrill that continued to course more forcefully through his veins every time he glanced at the clock and realized they were that much closer to midnight. With five minutes left in the year, he looked over at her, in the kitchen with Reyna yet again, and she met his eye. A small smile played at her lips in the seconds before she turned away again, and Percy decided he could live with the guilt of kissing her without being fully honest.

That was mistake number three of the hour – getting his hopes up, coming to terms with their situation, imagining he might actually kiss this person he _definitely_ shouldn’t be kissing.

With four minutes to midnight a very breathless and red faced Piper and Jason finally stumbled through the front door, Jason laden down with a massive karaoke machine and Piper balancing a cardboard box precariously in her arms. Disappointment flooded Percy in a flash, and then the thrill that had been holding his guilt at bay disappeared, leaving him with nothing but negativity he was sure he would end up stewing in for days. He watched as Piper and Jason weaved through the crowd toward Thalia to deliver the karaoke machine, trying to ignore the ache in his chest.

At three minutes to go, party guests started to assemble around Thalia and Reyna’s massive TV to watch the ball drop. Percy wished he was there, with Grover and Beckendorf and Silena, in the midst of a million strangers. Instead he was there, in the midst of a few dozen strangers and a handful of distant family members only just barely more than strangers, about to start his New Year dejected and miserable.

Two minutes before midnight, Piper appeared at Percy’s side, still struggling to strip away her ridiculously large and puffy coat. She gave him a tight smile and shrugged, seeming to say, _Guess we’re gonna kiss, after all_. 

When one final minute stood between New York City and a brand new year, Percy looked up, across the living room, just in time to catch Annabeth looking back at him. He wondered what she saw in his expression, if the anguish he felt was as obvious as he thought it must have been, and then he wondered what she thought of that anguish. Mostly he wondered, as the group around them began to count down the final seconds of the year, why she seemed as trapped in his gaze as he was in hers.

 _Ten_. 

Jason came up beside Annabeth, still flush from the cold and a little breathless, making her break the staring contest she and Percy had been caught in.

 _Nine_. 

Percy turned to the TV, taking in the familiar sight of Times Square at midnight and searching for Grover every time the camera panned back to the spectators.

 _Eight_. 

Piper’s hand slipped into Percy’s, familiar and comforting, mitigating a hint of the ache in his chest.

 _Seven_. 

“You okay?” Piper asked.

 _Six_. 

“Yeah,” Percy lied.

 _Five_.

Something – movement across the room or just his own stupid desire – made Percy return his gaze to where Annabeth stood.

 _Four_.

Annabeth turned her head, catching his eye again.

 _Three_.

She didn’t look away, and neither did he.

 _Two_.

He held his breath.

 _One_.

An inexplicable force pulled at him, trying to uproot him from where he stood and drag him across that room to where Annabeth stared back at him, but Percy knew better than to be moved, no matter how much he wanted to get swept up. This time he forced himself to look away first.

The ball at Times Square finished its journey down and a barrage of fireworks were set off, lighting up the TV screen and Thalia’s apartment windows simultaneously, flooding the darkened space with a rainbow of colors. The room erupted into a chorus of _Happy New Year!_ People shot off party poppers, champagne flutes clinked together, and then the party became a sea of couples throwing their arms around each other and ringing in the New Year with ceremonial kisses.

Once, when Percy had been young, he’d asked his mom why couples kissed at the stroke of midnight while watching footage of Times Square from the tiny apartment they’d shared with her then husband. Sally had told him it was for good luck, because they wanted to spend the whole year with that special person and if they kissed, the wish might come true. She hadn’t kissed Percy’s step-father that night, but they had spent the year with him anyway.

At least Percy knew he wanted to spend his year with Piper. He focused in on that thought when he turned to face her, managing a reluctant smile. Nothing would ever change the simple fact that he loved her, not time, nor experience, nor unwanted crushes. Knowing those things didn’t make him any less nervous about kissing her, though, because they’d managed to avoid it all the years they’d been friends, and a small part of him worried they might not be quite the same after.

When Percy continued to hesitate, Piper rolled her eyes. She curled her fingers into the front of his shirt and tugged him down, pushing up on her tiptoes to make up for the difference in their heights. It was a pleasant enough kiss, probably one of the better kisses he’d had over the course of his life, and he figured it seemed convincing enough to anyone else who might be watching. Percy even found himself lingering, letting it drag on in a gentle knead of lips that felt good, if not earth shaking or life changing. Then he got a hint of something very _un_ pleasant and snapped away.

“Fuck, Pipes, were you _smoking_?”

Piper blinked up at him, mouth hanging open and her eyes wide in response to being caught. “It was just one. I had such a bad day at that stupid new job, Perce. I just needed to relax.”

“Where did you even get a cigarette?” he asked, more confused than angry. As far as he knew, Piper hadn’t been keeping cigarettes around the house. She was an adult and allowed to if she wanted to, of course, but he hoped she would at least be honest with him about it.

“Jason gave me one,” she told him with a shrug, stepping back and crossing her arms.

That shocked him even more than the taste of cigarettes on her mouth had. “ _Jason_ smokes?”

“All kinds of people smoke,” Piper replied, the cross of her arms tightening a little and her chin rising in defiance of his disbelief. She always got defensive when her smoking came up, because both Percy and Grover hated it and had never held back giving her a bad time about it, but that was the first time he’d ever seen her get defensive about someone _else_ smoking.

“Sorry,” Percy said, holding his hands up in surrender. The last thing he wanted to do was start the year fighting with her over Jason’s bad habits. “It’s been a weird night.”

Eyes narrowing with concern, Piper took a step toward him again for the sake of keeping her voice down. “Are you really okay? Like, really. Be honest. You seemed upset when I got here, too.”

“You were right,” he confessed, the words barely above a whisper to prevent being overheard by anyone who might know Annabeth or potentially put two and two together. Trying to hide the truth fro Piper would be pointless, though, so he dove right in. “You were right about my crush, or feelings, or whatever. So, no, I’m not okay. It sucks.”

Percy expected Piper to gloat, to rub it in his face that she’d been right and he’d been in denial the last week, but she didn’t. She sighed, her expression softening, and she nodded. “I’m sorry, Perce.”

“I thought you’d be happy I finally admitted it,” he said, kind of wishing she’d done the gloating thing. Being on the receiving end of pity had always been hard for him, and he wasn’t really feeling like he deserved it in the wake of how excited he’d been to kiss another guy’s girlfriend.

“I thought I would be, too,” Piper conceded, letting out a sound that was as much laugh as it was another sigh. “Seeing you unhappy would never make me happy, though, not really. I’m glad you can admit it to yourself, but I still don’t like that it’s causing you so much grief.”

All he could do was duck his head, shove his hands into his pockets and mumble a halfhearted, “Thanks, Pipes.”

“No need to thank me, it’s what I’m here for,” she told him, laying a comforting hand on his bicep and giving it a light squeeze. “I need a drink now, though. We’ll catch back up in a few.”

Watching Piper disappear into the party in search of alcohol, Percy felt a little lighter. Admitting out loud that he was feeling something he shouldn’t for Annabeth was a relief, but with a rueful smile, he realized it was more than that. He’d worried things wouldn’t be quite the same after that New Year’s kiss, but they were unchanged, no awkwardness or confusion to cloud one of the greatest relationships in his life. That was a pretty great thought to start the year with.

He’d wait until morning to tell Piper about brunch on Valentine’s Day.

  


* * *

  


If Thalia hadn’t been watching him like a hawk, Jason might have still tried to weasel his way out of kissing Annabeth when the clock struck midnight. Annabeth certainly didn’t seem excited by the prospect of that midnight kiss, and for most of the countdown she refused to even look at him, as if not acknowledging him might allow her to avoid the moment altogether. Still, at twelve sharp she turned to him, a tight lipped smile on her lips, and said a soft, “Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year,” Jason echoed, his eyes meeting hers and seeking permission to lean down and close the gap between them. Her smile grew a smidgen and she nodded just enough for him to see.

Jason had expected kissing Annabeth to be awkward and stiff, maybe even a little gross. He’d known her literally his entire life, and half the time he considered her as much a sister as Thalia, but when he pressed his lips to hers, Jason was acutely aware of the fact that Annabeth was _not_ his sister, not really. She was a woman who knew him better than he knew himself, who he trusted with his life and all his secrets, who loved him despite having seen him at both his best and worst, and who let _him_ see _her_ at both her best and worst. Those were special things, unique things, and for someone who’d spent his whole life terrified over what might happen if he didn’t meet others’ expectations, those truths were especially meaningful.

Actually kissing Annabeth was nice. Jason probably could have gotten away with a simple peck, but he didn’t want to leave Thalia any room for objection, and once they’d made contact he found he didn’t mind kissing her deeper, more intently. His hands cupped her face between them gently, his fingers, still ice cold from the walk to Thalia’s apartment, warmed by her lightly flushed cheeks. He didn’t feel particularly moved or affected, but he liked the way her lips responded to his, and a sense of calm settled over him.

When they pulled apart, both Jason and Annabeth breathed out quiet sighs, and he saw the surprise he felt reflected in her eyes, as if she hadn’t expected it to be so palatable an experience, either. Over Christmas weekend, Jason had thought several times about how easily Annabeth fit into his life. There had been no magic or electricity in that kiss, but it had been satisfying in a way, and he didn’t think she was _hot_ , but she certainly was a beautiful woman by any measure. Maybe those two things were enough, when such more important pieces were already there.

Settling for nice and pleasant and safe had gotten Jason through life up to that point. He wasn’t sure why this had to be any different. They could be happy, if they dared to try. People had certainly built lives together on less than what Jason and Annabeth already had together.

“You could have at least popped a mint or something if you were going to kiss me after smoking,” Annabeth grumbled, shaking Jason from his unsettling train of thought.

“My apologies for not remembering to brush my teeth while literally running down the sidewalk to get here in time to save you from Thalia’s stupid kiss rule,” Jason replied, working quickly to compose himself so he didn’t accidentally give away the fact that he’d been so confused by that kiss.

Annabeth averted her eyes, hands fluttering to her hair in a nervous habit that had followed her almost her entire life. “I would have been fine if you didn’t make it. You didn’t have to hurry just for me.”

It had not been just for Annabeth that he hurried, but Jason decided to keep that to himself, as well. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have been miserable singing whatever stupid song Thalia chose for you. I know you better than to fall for that lie.”

“I wouldn’t have been singing a song,” she corrected, still not meeting his gaze, though her hands had at least settled. “Percy and I had made a pact to kiss at midnight if you and Piper hadn’t made it back in time.”

“You and… _Percy_ ,” Jason repeated in disbelief, his eyebrows drawing together and his lip curling in distaste. Automatically, his eyes flashed across the room to where Percy and Piper stood together, whispering to each other in the wake of their own midnight kiss. The midnight kiss Piper had deserved.

“Who else would I have kissed?” she asked, a little gruff, and her eyes fixed decidedly forward. Someone else might have thought she was watching the celebrations airing on TV, but Jason could tell she wasn’t actually seeing anything. “It’s not like I’d want to kiss a stranger and everyone else I know here is coupled off already.”

Jason kind of thought the answer to that question was obvious – _no one_. “Percy is coupled off, too.”

“But Piper wasn’t here and she gave him permission to figure out a back up plan,” Annabeth argued, her jaw setting stubbornly. “We’re having brunch with Hazel, Frank, Nico and Will on Valentine’s Day, by the way.”

“We are?” he asked, eyebrows shooting up again at the sudden change of subject. This barrage of information was beginning to make him dizzy and the urge to have a second cigarette in a single hour hit him hard, something he hadn’t experienced in years.

She finally forced herself to look at him properly again, having the decency to look apologetic. “Hazel asked me about it and she just sounded so excited by the idea that I couldn’t say no. I figured, it’s brunch, not dinner. You can still make other plans if you want to.”

Valentine’s Day was the furthest thing from Jason’s mind at the moment. Considering his recent track record, that brunch would probably be the closest thing he got to an actual date, anyway. Brunch wasn’t particularly romantic, and Jason did plan on joining Nico and Frank at their next _Mythomagic_ night, so he might even be excited about the chance to hang out with them by February. It would mean putting up their couple front yet again, but they’d survived Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. Barely, and with a few terrifyingly close calls from his unwelcome feelings, but still.

A lot could change in a month and a half, too. It was a new year and Jason had a new lease on life in the wake of his after Christmas epiphany, his perspectives beginning to shift even just in those first post-midnight minutes. His eyes fell back on Annabeth and the impulse to ask her how she felt after that kiss, if she kept entertaining the same thoughts he hadn’t been able to shake since this all started on Thanksgiving, hit him like a brick. Before he could find the right words to field that question, Annabeth flashed him another apologetic smile and excused herself.

At least Jason could take comfort in one thing – he wouldn’t see Piper again until Easter, at the earliest, and by then he was sure he would have a better handle on the mess his unwelcome feelings for her threatened to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i made so many mistakes posting this. omg.
> 
> next update will be valentine's day, folks! february 14th. see you then. ♥


	5. Valentine's Day

The new year brought with it nothing of note for Percy. Grover said his goodbyes on January second. Piper took to her new job in earnest. School started back up, a new semester and a new set of middle schoolers beginning their time in his classes. January had come and gone in the blink of an eye, Percy only registering the change in months when they transitioned into February and the halls at school started to fill with pink, red and white décor.

Piper reacted fairly well when Percy had told her about the brunch on Valentine’s Day the morning after Thalia’s party. He’d expected her to roll her eyes or get mad at him for making plans without discussing it with her first. Instead, she’d laughed and told him it sounded like fun. Brunch would be done before anything she might want to do herself, anyway. Percy decided not to ask too many questions about her positive reaction and risk the delicate agreement they seemed to have come to on the matter – the Sunday morning and early afternoon of February fourteenth would be spent at his cousin Hazel’s place.

They didn’t talk much about their New Year’s Eve kiss and, honestly, Percy didn’t really think about it, either. Piper had made a few jokes about how he was a better kisser than she thought he would be, and Percy had continued to tease her about how kissing a smoker was gross. These were fairly normal things for them, changed only now by the fact they had first hand experience to go on, rather than what they’d heard from their respective past partners.

One thing they _did_ talk about was the fact that Piper had purposefully tried to keep Jason occupied when she’d found out Percy’s midnight backup plan was Annabeth. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, Piper conspiring to help him kiss another guy’s girlfriend. Part of him was glad it hadn’t worked out, though. If he’d kissed Annabeth, he was pretty sure he never would have been able to get her out of his head. Thankfully he managed to keep thoughts of her at bay for the most part.

There was one distinct exception to his ability to keep his mind off Annabeth. At least once a week, Piper would make some vague, sneaky excuse about what she had planned that day. Percy always knew what that meant – she was meeting Annabeth, either for lunch, or dinner, or shopping, or some other friendly outing.

Percy pretended he didn’t know what was happening on those days, and he also pretended it didn’t bother him, but he knew and it bothered him plenty. It didn’t bother him because he worried Piper would make some kind of move or that she and Annabeth might become anything more than friends, if only because he and Piper had a hard and fast rule that they’d never pursue anyone the other had feelings for. It bothered him because it reminded him of Annabeth, and it made him wish he could go hang out, too.

Before he knew it, Percy was staring Valentine’s Day right in the face.

“You ready to be a couple again tomorrow?” Piper asked, late Saturday night. She’d only just gotten home from work and looked more exhausted than Percy ever felt at the end of his days. In the end, Piper had sacrificed her Valentine’s Day evening to work, and Percy could tell that was bringing her down already.

“No,” Percy answered honestly, bringing her a cold beer so she didn’t have to get off the couch. “Are we supposed to be extra lovey dovey since it’s Valentine's Day?”

“Maybe we can take our cues from how everyone else acts,” she replied before popping open her can and taking a long, slow drink out of it. “Why don’t I know how to act on a Valentine’s Day date all the sudden?”

Plopping down on the far end of the couch, Percy propped his feet up on the coffee table and laughed. “Because it’s not an actual date?”

“Yeah, but it’s still acting like we’re on an actual date,” Piper argued, shifting down the couch slightly so that she could plant her feet in Percy’s lap. A wiggle of her toes told him she expected a foot rub.

“Exactly, you’re a terrible actress,” Percy agreed, unable to keep a grin off his face as he delivered that insult. To placate her and prevent any acts of retaliatory violence, he decided to give in and grant her the foot massage she so desperately wanted. “I don’t know about you, but I’m just paranoid we’ll either be too over the top, or not do enough, and either way everyone will end up suspicious about it.”

Piper hummed softly, eyes fluttering closed as she continued to sip on her beer. “Well, they’ve all seen us kiss.”

“Once,” he said. “They’ve also seen you kiss Annabeth, and people who aren’t actually dating kiss on New Year’s Eve all the time.”

For a couple minutes Piper just laid there, not even drinking from her can again, and Percy thought she might have fallen asleep until she asked, “Should we lay down some ground rules, then? Like, what coupley things we’re comfortable with doing and which things we aren’t.”

That actually sounded like a brilliant idea, and Percy couldn’t believe they hadn’t thought to have the discussion earlier. “Okay, shoot – what are you cool with?”

“Well, we’ve already kissed once, and I like kissing in general, so that’s fine by me,” Piper started, opening her eyes again and pursing her lips thoughtfully. “We’ve always held hands and stuff, so all that’s fine. No tongue, clothes stay on, and just like, don’t try to grab my boobs or anything, I guess? You’re welcome to rub my feet any time you want, too, by the way.”

“You’ve got a gross callous on this one,” Percy observed as he switched from her left foot to her right.

“Because I made the mistake of wearing new shoes to work last week,” she replied, heaving a sigh and tipping the last of her beer into her mouth.

“Rookie mistake,” he teased, but her weird, rough bump did not dissuade him from finishing that foot massage. “So, we kiss when appropriate, hold hands, and I won’t try to grab your boobs or anything. We’ll pass as a legitimate couple in front of my middle schoolers, at least.”

Laughing, Piper lifted the foot Percy had already finished rubbing and tapped Percy on the cheek with it, barely flinching when he tried to swat her away – she was truly a disgusting human being and he loved her more than words could ever express. “Are you sure you’re okay with all this?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked, shoving her foot away more forcefully when she tried to tap him with it again. That was his cue to finish with the foot massage. If Piper was going to harass him with her gross, calloused feet, he was not going to reward her.

“We haven’t really talked about how you’re feeling about… you know,” Piper replied as she adjusted on the couch, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. When Percy looked away and didn’t respond, she continued, “Just because I’m friends with Annabeth now doesn’t mean you can’t tell me how you’re feeling. It’s not like I’m going to tell her – in fact, I can’t tell her, even if I wanted to. Seeing her on Valentine’s Day, with her boyfriend, would understandably be upsetting, or awkward, or like a dozen other things, though, and if you need some kind of extra moral support before tomorrow, just let me know.”

Upset and awkward were pretty accurate descriptors for how Percy felt heading into the next morning, but he didn’t necessarily want to get into discussing it. Admitting that he had feelings for Annabeth had been one thing. Diving into his feelings and picking them apart seemed like overkill for something that was little more than a glorified fascination. In time, he would get over it. He’d meet someone at work, or out getting coffee, or maybe even give a dating app a shot, and then none of this would matter. The only thing causing a problem now was that pretending to date Piper in front of his family made finding someone to actually date a little challenging.

“It’s just brunch. There’s nothing to talk about,” Percy said, patting Piper on the knee and then getting to his feet. “We need to leave by ten tomorrow. I wanted to stop by the bakery down the street and get a cake or something. Rude to show up empty handed.”

“We’ll need to get two cakes,” Piper called as Percy walked away. “One for Frank and Hazel and one for me to eat all by myself before I spend _Valentine's Day_ taking pictures in the fucking mall.”

  


* * *

  


No month had ever been more hellish for Jason than January.

Neither he nor Annabeth had said a word about their kiss in the weeks since New Year’s Eve. He, however, hadn’t been able to think of much else while around her, which was especially infuriating considering he saw her all day, every day at work, where he needed to be thinking about a lot of other things. No matter how hard he tried to focus, his mind eventually circled back around to that kiss, though – when they were in the middle of meetings, or when he spotted her walking out of her office, or when she and Leo swung by his desk to ask him if he wanted to get lunch, all of it like nothing had changed, even though it all felt very different.

That wasn’t entirely true, actually. Despite the fact that no one had told him, Leo somehow knew something had changed between Jason and Annabeth. Every day he would walk past Jason’s desk and report how many days remained until Valentine’s Day. Sometimes Jason would glance at Leo after staring at Annabeth a second too long and Leo would wiggle his eyebrows or mouth the words _Valentine’s Day_ like some kind of endless, cruel taunt. Luckily, Annabeth seemed ignorant to Leo’s teasing, so at least Jason didn’t need to worry about Leo being murdered.

Jason had to admit, Leo had been right, though. He wouldn’t quite call the way he looked at Annabeth _longing_ , but it was certainly not the way he’d looked at her before. There were little things he noticed that he hadn’t before, too, like how her the combination of her skirts and heels made her legs look longer, or how curly little baby hairs escaped whenever she wore her hair up, trailing down the slope of her neck. Sometimes he’d notice her laughing, head thrown back, and smile in response without even thinking about it. 

Just like New Year’s Eve, Jason would find himself thinking how easy it would be to go into Annabeth’s office and ask her if she wanted to have dinner. Telling her about his confusion would be a little embarrassing, but it wouldn’t be the hardest thing he’d ever done, and Jason trusted Annabeth enough to believe she wouldn’t just laugh in his face. He wondered how she would react, if she might confess to having entertained the same thoughts since they’d shared that kiss. It could be that simple, just go to their favorite restaurant for single meal – because their favorite restaurant was the same – and come out of it with the entire framework of their relationship changed, for better or worse.

All Jason did for six full weeks was _think_. He did not act on any of his thoughts, though, just letting them run rampant through his mind until he stood outside Annabeth’s apartment door on Valentine’s Day morning and knocked three times.

“Hey,” Annabeth said when she ripped the door open and then stepped aside to allow him in.

A cursory first glance told Jason that Annabeth was already frazzled. She was still in the t-shirt and shorts he assumed she’d slept in, her makeup finished, but her hair a mass of unruly curls, and her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, evident despite the way she’d tried to hide it with concealer. Considering Jason wasn’t particularly early, the fact that she wasn’t ready to walk out the door meant something had thrown her morning off. There was only one thing Jason could think of ruining Annabeth’s morning on February fourteenth and _that_ thought threw off his morning as soon as it occurred to him, too.

“What did he do?” Jason asked, stepping into the apartment and beginning to strip off the layers he’d bundled up in against the mid-February chill. Annabeth always kept the heat high and he had a feeling he would be staying for more than just a couple minutes while she finished getting ready.

“Nothing,” she replied, averting her gaze and heading straight back toward the bathroom.

Once Jason had his scarf and jacket hung by the door and his shoes slipped off, he followed, stopping outside the door so he could talk to her through it. “There’s only one thing that upsets you like this on Valentine’s Day, Annabeth.”

“I just overslept, that’s all,” she answered. The edge in her voice should have been enough to make him back off, and usually it would have been, but not today, not about this.

“You cried because you overslept?” Jason pressed, laying his disbelief on thick.

“I didn’t cry,” Annabeth said, her irritation growing.

“He didn’t call or anything, did he?” Jason continued, having half a mind to stick his head in the doorway and look her straight in the eye, dare her to deny it to his face.

Several seconds of silence followed and Jason pursed his lips, waiting. Annabeth finally stepped out of the bathroom, hair twisted into some kind of up do that looked like it should have taken longer than she’d been in there and her arms crossed over her chest. “He didn’t call. I checked Instagram this morning and he’d uploaded a bunch of pictures from Paris with– with his _fiance_.”

Jason had to actively resist the urge to roll his eyes. “Don’t tell me he’s still dating–”

“Yep,” Annabeth confirmed, and even though she looked as fiercely defiant as ever, her bottom lip trembled.

They never used _his_ name. There was only ever one him where they were concerned, but the jerk did have an actual name – Luke Castellan.

Annabeth had met Luke her senior year of college, through Thalia, who had known him for years at that point and considered him one of her closest friends. Though Luke had been several years older, he and Annabeth had hit it off almost immediately. They’d dated for years after that, and the whole time Annabeth had worshiped the ground Luke walked on, sung nothing but his praises to anyone who would listen. After two years, they’d moved in together. Everyone, including Annabeth, had expected engagement to follow, but a proposal had never come.

In the third year of their relationship, things had slowly turned tense. The praises Annabeth had once so eagerly sung had died off. While she never expressed anything particularly negative, Jason had been able to tell she was unhappy. A few offhand comments about how much time Luke spent at work had made Jason suspicious, the pictures on social media with one coworker in particular even more so. Relationships had rough patches, though, and Jason had been able to tell that Annabeth refused to give up on the person she was so sure she wanted to spent the rest of her life with. Very few people had ever been such permanent fixtures in Annabeth’s life and she never did let them go easily.

Before their fourth anniversary, the morning before Valentine’s Day, Luke had ended things. The next evening, Annabeth had seen him out with a woman from his office, the one who had appeared in so many of his pictures leading up to that moment. A woman he’d proceeded to date. A woman who was, apparently, now his fiance.

“Why do you even still follow him on Instagram?” Jason asked, his brow furrowed.

“Because we have a lot of mutual friends,” Annabeth replied with a shrug, her voice much too small for Jason’s liking. 

“They’re still going to be your friends if you unfollow him,” Jason told her, trying to deliver the message gently. He was pretty sure he failed, mostly because Annabeth glared at him for a second and then turned to storm off to her room.

All the years Annabeth had dated Luke, Jason had kind of hated the guy. He’d kind of hated the guy when Luke had just been one of Thalia’s friends, too, but when Luke had set sights on Annabeth it had set off all kinds of alarms in Jason’s head. He’d never been able to explain it, though. Now he could explain it, but that was too little too late.

Keeping the anger out of his voice was difficult because Jason had been there to pick up the pieces after the breakup, when Annabeth had closed herself off and thrown herself into work. It had been that summer she got so sick she had to have surgery, something he was sure had been a result of stress and heartbreak. Every year since, though, Annabeth had hated Valentine’s Day. Part of Jason wondered if the reason she’d accepted Hazel’s invitation so willingly was just because she wanted something to do, people to be around, a good memory on a day that had been miserable for her for years.

“It’s not about them unfollowing me, Jason,” Annabeth replied, rolling her eyes and storming off toward her bedroom. She continued to call after him from inside, but Jason stayed put. “If I unfollow him, they’ll all know. They’ll know I couldn’t take seeing him happy and moving on. They’ll know I’m not happy and haven’t moved on. They’ll know everything, and talk shit, and then I’ll look like the sad little loser who got dumped after _four years_ and can’t get over it.”

“You’re not a sad little loser,” Jason said, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him with a thump.

“Yeah, well, that’s what I’ll look like if I unfollow him now, especially since I’m all alone today, again,” she complained, appearing back in the doorway and pointing behind her back. “Could you zip me up?”

Jason nodded, mouth momentarily gone dry, and stepped forward to zip her dress up. It was a dark red, sleeveless and low cut, with an embroidered and sequined lace overlay that hung lower than the dress’s main body’s hemline. In the back it cut equally low, the top of the zipper coming up to just above the small of her back. Like all those times back in the office, Jason found himself paying attention to things he never had before – little freckles covering her shoulders, how small her waist was, the surprisingly well defined line of her cleavage. 

“What? Is it too formal?” Annabeth asked, glancing back at Jason over her shoulder. He shook his head. “Hazel just said wear something cute and red. This is the only red thing I own that doesn’t look like it belongs in a boardroom.”

As soon as Jason had finished with the zipper, Annabeth disappeared back into her room, and Jason tried to focus back in on the present. “You’re not all alone today, you know.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but we both know it’s not the same,” she replied, appearing back in the hallway, pulling on a jacket and a pair of red heels in hand. “Don’t worry. I just needed to get the tears out of my system.”

“Okay, but,” Jason started, frozen in place as Annabeth walked away, giving in to a rush of courage that had suddenly come over him, back down the hall, “what if it was the same?”

Annabeth froze at the end of the hall, turning very slowly to look back at Jason. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve just been thinking, since New Year’s–”

“Since _New Year’s_?” Annabeth interrupted, her eyes narrowing at him.

It was almost enough to make him hesitate, but only almost. There was no sense in going back now that he’d started. “You’re my best friend, Annabeth. We make a good team and we always have. My family loves you, my friends love you, _I_ love you, and if the last few months have shown us anything, it’s that you fit perfectly into my life. Honestly, you always have. Kissing you was a lot nicer than I expected it to be, and I’d be up for giving it another shot if you are. Maybe it just took this really stupid idea for us to see what was always right in front of us – this, _us_. It’s good, it makes sense, and it’s easy.”

“We’re going to be late, Jason,” Annabeth said, her expression morphing into something unsettling and unreadable. She didn’t let him get another word out before turning toward the front door.

  


* * *

  


Percy had kind of expected Frank and Hazel to live in the kind of upscale apartment or condo most of his relatives favored, usually paid for by trust funds or parents, but they had a modest one bedroom in Brooklyn that Percy got the impression they paid for themselves with their respective salaries. More impressive to him than the unimpressive apartment, though, were Frank and Hazel’s two bulldogs, who launched themselves, snorting and huffing, at him and Piper as soon as Hazel had let them in the front door.

“We can put them in our room if they’re bothering you,” Hazel offered, but Percy was already squatting down to the dogs’ level to start ruffling their ears and scratching their heads.

“No way,” Percy replied, flashing Hazel a quick grin. 

Piper stepped past him, ruffling his hair instead of stopping to pet either of the dogs, and then handed the cake they’d stopped for on the way over to Hazel. “How old are they?”

“The big, fat drooler is Hannibal and he’s nine,” Hazel replied, waving Piper into the living room while Percy stayed there in the entryway, one hand on each pup. “The smaller one is Arion, and he’s seven, but be careful with him, because he’ll eat anything. I had to take him in to the office for an x-ray the other day because he ate one of my bracelets and I was worried it wasn’t passing.”

“Nine is pretty old for a bulldog, isn’t it?” Piper asked as she followed Hazel around a corner and into what Percy assumed must be the kitchen or dining room.

Their voices were muffled, but Percy could still hear Hazel explain from where he remained with the dogs, “It’s very old for a bulldog, yeah, but we’ve only had him for about a year. Bulldogs tend to be abandoned at higher rates as they age. Hannibal’s last family dropped him off at a shelter because he kept getting infections under the folds of his skin. Most people don’t realize how much care bulldogs need as they age, but they’re actually the reason Frank decided he wanted to be a vet.”

Giving each of the dogs one last, quick scratch behind the ears, Percy straightened back up and joined the girls in the kitchen. “Where is Frank?”

“One of the bears at the zoo went into labor last night, so they ended up calling him in for backup,” Hazel explained, her nose wrinkled in apparent disappointment. “There’s a lot of work to do when new cubs are born, so he’s probably not going to make it back in time for brunch. I’ll be lucky if I get him back today at all.”

“And you’re still hosting?” Piper asked. She’d taken a seat on one of the stools at the kitchen counter, a mimosa in hand from a tray on that same counter. “I don’t want you to feel like a third – or, well, seventh, I guess – wheel at your own party. We can call today off, if you want.”

“Actually, Will can’t make it, either,” Hazel explained, continuing to wear her displeased expression. “He _also_ got called in to work last minute. Nico almost bailed on us, too, but I convinced him to come keep me company. We’re going to be each other’s consolation dates.”

The term _consolation Dates_ almost made Percy laugh. It seemed like the only ones not going to be at that brunch with a consolation date would be Jason and Annabeth. With that depressive thought, Percy pointed to the platter of champagne flutes on the counter. “Do all of those have alcohol in them?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hazel replied, her expression finally evening out. “Would you like some plain orange juice?”

“Please,” Percy confirmed, thankful she made the connection without him having to explain that he didn’t like to drink, or worse, _why_ he didn’t like to drink. “Annabeth doesn’t drink, either, so she’ll probably want just the juice, too.”

Freezing with her mimosa halfway to her lips, Piper looked at Percy, brow furrowed. “She doesn’t?”

“You didn’t know?” Percy replied, genuinely surprised it hadn’t come up while the two of them had been out together. He was also kind of worried that _his_ knowing was weird, and he quickly continued for the sake of explaining himself before Piper got any weird ideas. “On New Year’s she was drinking plain cranberry juice, so I asked her about it. She said she doesn’t like the way it makes her feel, something like that.”

Apparently he hadn’t been quick enough to prevent any of Piper’s weird ideas, though, because she pursed her lips and studied him for a couple seconds. “Interesting,” she finally said, taking another sip of mimosa after.

“Sorry I didn’t have any out already,” Hazel said, passing Percy a small glass of orange juice. It wasn’t as exciting to drink out of such a mundane glass, but he held his tongue and shook his head to refuse Hazel’s unnecessary apology.

The three of them fell into casual conversation while waiting for the rest of the group. Percy had expected him and Piper to be the last pair to arrive, with how close they had cut it to party time, but everyone else seemed to be running even later. It didn’t bother him too much, at least, because he enjoyed listening to Hazel talk about the veterinary small clinic she worked at, answering her questions about his new semester with his middle schoolers, and watching Piper roll her eyes when asked about her job at the JC Penny’s photo center.

About fifteen minutes into that conversation, Nico arrived. The dogs were not particularly excited to see Nico walk in, something Percy laughed about internally, but didn’t comment on. Once Nico had been greeted, they all circled around the kitchen counter and resumed their conversation, this time with the addition of Nico’s commentary on work, though he was significantly quieter than the rest.

Percy was beginning to wonder if Jason and Annabeth were ever going to show when a knock finally came on the front door and the dogs hurried toward the sound with their little claws scratching against the hardwood floor.

“I’m over dressed,” Annabeth declared as soon as she stepped into the kitchen, dogs circling her feet, her shoulders slumped.

Even Percy, with his very limited knowledge about fashion and what was and wasn’t appropriate in various circumstances, knew that much was true. Their hostess, Hazel, was in a pretty red sweater and a full, white, knee length skirt of several puffy, tulle layers. Piper had opted for some red shorts with a big bow for a belt and scalloped detailing along the hem, paired with a loose fitting white button up shirt Percy was pretty sure she had stolen from him, and a bright red bra peaking out underneath. In comparison, Annabeth’s sequined, low cut, red dress belonged on a candlelit dinner date – and she looked absolutely stunning in it.

“You look hot, don’t worry,” Piper quickly assured Annabeth, but the half stifled snort of a laugh that followed didn’t give that assurance any credence.

“Shut up,” Annabeth replied, rolling her eyes, but she seemed a little comforted by the compliment and a small smile pulled at her lips. “At least Jason wore a tie, so I don’t have to feel like a total dweeb.”

“I can take it off,” Jason said, clearly trying to sound like he was joking, but his voice was strained, his delivery awkward and forced.

Annabeth glanced back at him, her tone also failing to sound appropriately playful as she replied, “And then I’ll strangle you with it.”

Eyebrows raised, Percy glanced at Piper. She was always the first to pick up on weird dynamics like that, so he knew she would have something to say about it, if only in a whisper, but she didn’t seem to be paying any attention. It was Nico who caught Percy’s eye, lips pressed into a thin line, as if trying to hold in some kind of laugh.

They were clearly in for an interesting afternoon.

  


* * *

  


Springing his feelings on Annabeth right before they left for brunch had been a mistake. Jason realized as much too late.

The whole drive over, Annabeth had remained coldly silent, staring out her window and paying him no attention. Jason didn’t know what to make of that, if she was just thinking or if she was actually so mad at him she didn’t want to say a word. He wouldn’t blame her for being angry, not with that terrible timing of his. Honestly, Jason was pretty pissed at himself at the moment.

At least they weren’t alone after that drive, although Jason got the impression the others caught on to the tension between him and Annabeth quickly. They were kind enough not to comment on whatever they had sensed. If he’d made their Valentine’s Day awkward, no one was holding it against them – or against him, considering it was hit dumb ass’s fault.

Hazel didn’t seem too bothered by Frank’s absence as the group of six migrated to the dining table to start their meal. If anything, she gave the impression she was excited about how he got to spend his day, bringing it up at any and every opportunity and sharing updates with the group as she received them via text. She was as proud of his work as he probably felt, maybe even more so, considering how modest Jason had discovered Frank to be during the first few Mythomagic nights with him and Nico. That pride from Hazel was a wonderful display of love to witness on a day that was supposed to be about love, but tended to be filled with forced displays and insincere sentiments.

“Do the two of you have any plans for tonight?” Piper asked, halfway through brunch, her eyes flicking between Jason and Annabeth.

Another thing Jason had been doing for the entirety of the afternoon, aside from kicking himself for that stupid confession, was avoiding paying any extra attention to Piper. He _wanted_ to pay extra attention to Piper, though. In fact, not paying attention to her was painfully difficult.

She’d worn her long, black hair down, a curtain of shiny, eye catching obsidian draped over one shoulder. The other shoulder was bare, her loose shirt hanging off it, save for the bright red strap of her bra. Jason was fairly certain her shirt belonged to Percy, based on the way it fit her like a circus tent, cinched at her waist where she had tucked it into her shorts. To finish the look, she’d placed a little sequin heart on the outer corner of her right eye, so that every time she turned her head the light caught it and Jason’s gaze was unwittingly drawn to her, like a cruel trap set for the explicit purpose of torturing him.

“Nothing concrete,” Annabeth answered, before Jason could collect his thoughts effectively enough to formulate an answer. There was tension in her voice, plain enough for everyone to hear, but she pressed forward. “What about you two?”

“I have to work,” Piper replied, shaking her head, catching the light with her little sequin heart and scrambling Jason’s thoughts all over again. “Being the newbie means that I get scheduled for the shittiest shifts. We’re expecting to get a bunch of teenage couples stumbling in for cheesy shoots they only buy two prints from tonight.”

“We should all go, have you commemorate this brunch for us,” Percy suggested, the teasing lilt to his voice making it clear he didn’t intent to follow through.

“If you do that, I’m going to need about ten more of these,” Piper said, shaking her empty champagne flute. She tilted the glass toward Jason and Annabeth across the table. “Actually, though, you two should consider swinging by some time. I could use a little of your obnoxiously photogenic energy for my portfolio.”

Jason didn’t miss the fact that Piper included both him and Annabeth under the heading of _obnoxiously photogenic_. It shouldn’t have made him so happy. Being attractive to Piper should not have mattered to Jason at all, especially not now, especially not after he’d made his confession to Annabeth. His attention should be on her, and yet, halfway through that meal, Jason had hardly spared Annabeth a sidelong glance.

“She’s been trying to convince me to sit for her since Christmas,” Annabeth told the group, a surprising degree of playfulness finally beginning to seep into her voice, the edge of her irritation at Jason finally beginning to wear off.

Caught off guard by Annabeth’s warmth, Jason gaped, but it was Percy who jumped in to reply, “I wouldn’t give in if I were you. She’s dangerous behind the camera.”

“That’s quite the accusation coming from you,” Annabeth replied before taking a sip of orange juice, juice that had only been ready for her because Percy had given Hazel a heads up about the fact that Annabeth didn’t drink. Jason had no idea when Percy had learned that Annabeth stayed away from alcohol. Most people at work didn’t even know, despite frequenting office dinners and holiday parties together for years. It was strange for someone who’d seen her just a handful of times to know this thing she kept so closely guarded.

Percy grinned, like Annabeth’s thinly veiled, teasing insult made him very happy. “This is a takes one to know one situation, you see.”

“What makes her dangerous behind the camera?” Hazel asked, an amused little smile playing at her lips in response to the exchange. “I think I need to know, since we’ve asked her to shoot our wedding and all.”

“Oh, you have nothing to worry about wedding wise,” Percy assured Hazel, despite the fact that Jason didn’t think Hazel was actually worried about anything. “It’s when she asks you to sit one on one. There’s a very good chance she’s just using it as an excuse to get you naked.”

The entire table exploded into laughter, though Jason’s was more coking on the air and Piper’s a clear sound of embarrassment. She gave Percy’s shoulder a gentle shove. “That was _one time_ and you knew my assignment was to take nudes going in!”

“Did I know? Me? I don’t remember knowing anything,” Percy replied, pointing at himself in a very unconvincing act of ignorance, his eyes scanning the rest of the table for support Jason didn’t think he was actually going to get.

“You were a shit model, anyway,” Piper said, giving Percy another shove, this one a tiny bit more forceful. “I should’ve asked Grover.”

“Are those pictures still in your portfolio?” Annabeth asked, eyebrows raised and voice becoming increasingly light.

A subtle, unexpected, blush crept up on Percy’s face, some of his usual bravado fading. “They are not in her portfolio. I made her promise to delete and destroy them all after she got her grade on the assignment.”

“Did you ever check to make sure she actually deleted them?” Nico asked. His laughter had been much more subdued than the rest of the group, but there was a sly smile on his lips. It had only taken Jason one round of Mythomagic to learn that Nico tended to hold his tongue until he had something especially smart to say. He chose his moments carefully, but well.

“He never did,” Piper answered, and then it was Percy’s turn to give her a shove. When he dropped his hand back to the table, he covered Piper’s with it and, in a sweet and subtle gesture of affection, she turned her palm upward to lace their fingers together. “I did delete them, though. Percy got me out of a big bind by modeling for me, so the least I could do was respect his wishes. Also, keeping pictures of him that he didn’t want me to have would’ve been a little creepy.”

As Piper said those words, her gaze flickered to Jason and he caught her eye. She’d kept pictures of him that he had asked her to delete, although he’d admittedly more or less consented to her keeping them in the end. A small part of him was tempted to expose her there at the table, in front of the whole group. He didn’t want to, though. He liked their little secret. Instead of exposing her, Jason flashed Piper a tiny, knowing smile and let himself enjoy the way she smirked at him in return.

There was nothing wrong with taking pleasure in their secret, of appreciating that little smile, or getting caught up in the shine of the sequin at the corner of her eye. They were friends. Piper had a boyfriend. Jason had Annabeth – who Piper thought was his girlfriend and who Jason had very confusing feelings toward. He wasn’t even being outwardly flirtatious, which was more than Piper and Annabeth could say about each other. No lines had been crossed, and it would stay that way.

Jason was too old for relationship drama. He was too _tired_ for relationship drama, and had been for most of his life, which was largely why he’d never been eager to actively date around. It was time for him to do the smart and sensible thing, to listen to his parents and settle down. There was no sense in pining after a woman who was already taken, not when one so obviously perfect for him was already right there. Annabeth _was_ perfect for him, too. They’d even both stupidly over dressed for that very brunch.

It was one relationship in particular that made Jason so fearful of romance – his parents. They had separated when he was in high school and, as a lengthy and messy divorce and custody battle had ensued, Jason had been pulled in a dozen different directions. School, sports and other extra curriculars had piled up, all while he’d been left to take care of his mom while she started to waste away at the hands of depression and alcohol. Even Thalia had run as far in the opposite direction as she could get during that time, to escape the mess their parents supposed _love_ had created. A year and a half later, the divorce had been called off, Zeus and Beryl had suddenly worked out their differences, reunited, renewed their vows in a massive and public ceremony, and Jason had been left to feel like he was absolutely crazy for not just being happy about it.

Now, Jason wanted only stability and normalcy from life, nothing more and nothing less. The road to those things was clear. The road to those things was Annabeth. He turned his gaze to her, beside him, smiling and engaging with the group around the table, and he felt more confident of that than ever. They could have a simple, fulfilling, _stable_ life together.

Confessing the way he did had been a mistake, but the confession itself had been the right move.

  


* * *

  


When Percy had agreed to brunch with Hazel and company, he’d expected it to be a meal and some conversation, maybe a little drinking, then they’d call it a day. He had been wrong. They had their meal, conversation and drinking, but that wasn’t where it ended.

After they cleared the table, the group moved to Hazel’s living room. Both dogs were very excited about the move, following at Hazel’s heels while she grabbed a few things from a cabinet. Percy admired how optimistic she’d managed to stay about Frank missing out on the festivities. Nico, on the other hand, had complained at every opportunity about Will having to work – seriously, Percy didn’t think he’d ever met someone who was dating a doctor complain so much about the fact they were dating a doctor, rather than brag about it. The grumpiness was pretty endearing, though, Percy had to admit. Clearly Nico was crazy about his boyfriend, even if a little less obvious about it.

“This is always her favorite part,” Nico told the group in a faux whisper, earning himself a glare from his sister. “It’s the whole reason she bullied me into coming. Even teams.”

“Teams?” Jason asked, eyebrows raised. He sat with his arm across the back of the couch, Annabeth beside him. While Annabeth had seemed to relax over the course of their brunch, it was still painfully obvious she was giving her boyfriend the cold shoulder over something.

Nico opened his mouth to explain, but Hazel beat him to the punch, turning around with a board game box displayed between her hands. It looked like it must have come straight out of 1965, both because of the retro design and color scheme on the front, and because of how battered, bruised and faded the cardboard was. “ _The Newlywed Game!_ ”

“We play every year,” Nico added, Percy unable to tell if the guy’s tone was one of excitement or annoyance. Perhaps his affection for his sister made it possible to be both.

“Having Nico and me be teammates would usually feel like cheating, but you guys have known each other forever, right?” Hazel asked, setting the box on the coffee table and then slipping the top off to start unpacking it all. The dogs sniffed at the box around her arms, trying to figure out if it was something they could eat. Arion definitely took more interest after their initial sniffs.

From what Percy could tell, the only original pieces in the game were the question cards, the backs of each card just as discolored as the box itself. The stack of notepads and pens inside had been restocked, probably within the last year, and he was pretty sure the whiteboard for score keeping was technology newer than the box could have been. There was also an hourglass with plastic that was brightly colored and therefore seemingly no older than a decade at most. The fact that they kept all those new pieces in such an old and battered container was kind of adorable. Without having to be told, Percy could perfectly picture little Hazel, Nico and Bianca playing this very game from the exact same box growing up, handed down by their parents, or even grandparents.

“Forever sounds about right,” Annabeth answered, a little tension returning to her voice, as Hazel began to pass out the pens and pads of paper.

“I think the rest of you have a small advantage of us, but I won’t complain,” Piper agreed, patting Percy on the knee. While the other two pairs had known each other since birth, Percy and Piper had only known each other since elementary school. Percy liked to think they still knew each other just as well, too, though.

With all their utensils passed out, Hazel plopped down on the couch between Annabeth and Nico, and the dogs followed – Hannibal jumping up into her lap and Arion curling up on her feet. “Perfect. It’ll be a nice, competitive game, then.”

“Except you and Nico probably already know all the questions and each other’s answers,” Jason interjected, his tone too flat for Percy to tell whether or not he was teasing.

Apparently Nico had no trouble, though, because he laughed. “Already preparing your excuse to be a sore loser?”

“I’m not a sore loser,” Jason replied, his lips turning into a comically pitiful pout. Piper must have agreed with the comical bit, because she only just barely stifled a laugh.

“You’re the sorest loser on the planet,” Annabeth said, turning her head to glare at Jason with clear accusation.

“Is that the baby who tattled to Aunt Beryl about _cheaters_ calling someone else a sore loser?” Percy couldn’t help snapping back. She’d set herself up too perfectly for him to resist.

Hazel, undeterred by the weak attempts at smack talk in the midst of her living room, clapped her hands to draw the group’s attention. “So, the game categorizes questions as for ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen,’ but that’s dumb and antiquated, so we just shuffle all the cards together and take turns between each partner regardless.”

“I like the way you think,” Piper said, giving Hazel a quick thumbs up.

“Thank you,” Hazel replied, chin raised in pride. “You can decide who’s going to answer first, then, and when everyone is ready, I’ll draw our first question card.”

Percy glanced at Piper, sitting with her legs crossed beside him. They were the only ones who’d opted not to sit on the couch, going for a smaller love seat instead, but it allowed them both a little more space to spread out compared to the others, which Piper took full advantage of. “I’ll answer questions about you first,” she decided with a confident nod. Since he had no preference, Percy just agreed with an equally confident nod of his own.

When the rest of the group had decided on their playing order, Hazel drew the first card and read their first question aloud, “Would your partner say that: they’re a better lover than they look, or they look like a better lover than they are?”

“Answering this about you is gross,” Nico commented, but Percy noted that didn’t stop him from beginning to scribble away on his notepad just the same.

The idea of Piper answering that question about Percy was equally gross, but he could not express his distaste under these circumstances. Instead, he just had to sit there while Piper quietly considered him, her lips pursed. Deciding not to think too much about it, he jotted down his own answer and then settled in to watch the awkwardness unfold.

“You two go first, and we’ll rotate through answers clockwise,” Hazel instructed after the little hourglass had emptied into its bottom section, and she pointed to Percy and Piper.

Piper nodded, still as confident as she had been earlier, and flipped over her notepad to display her answer while announcing it to the group, “Better lover than he looks.”

“I’m not sure what this means, but,” Percy sighed and flipped over his pad, too, “that’s one point for us. I also said I’m better than I look.”

Getting the first point of the game definitely felt good, even if the question was an awkward one to start with, and especially because neither of the other pairs earned a point from the round themselves. Percy pretended not to notice that Jason had said Annabeth was also better than she looked. He did not need those thoughts in his head at the moment, especially because, in his opinion, Annabeth looked like she’d be exceptionally good in bed. But, again, those were thoughts Percy refused to entertain.

Their next question was an easy one all around – _What would your partner say are their favorite kind of “chips”: chocolate, potato, or poker._ Percy knew without even having to think that Piper’s were chocolate. Hazel, likewise, knew Nico’s were chocolate. Jason was the odd one out, with Annabeth correctly answering that his favorite would be potato. It was nice for Percy and Piper to maintain their lead, at least, even if they didn’t gain an advantage.

Question number three was definitely interesting – _If your partner could have one custom-made cuckoo clock designed, which one of your friends heads would they say would look most appropriate popping out?_ Piper didn’t even think about what Percy’s answer would be and she was right on the mark by naming Grover. Nico incorrectly guessed himself for Hazel’s answer, when Hazel had actually answered Frank, something they all enjoyed a good laugh over. Jason got Annabeth’s answer right this time, though, with their friend Leo being the head preferred.

By question number four, Percy was feeling pretty good about himself, going three for three on correct answers. That fourth question gave him pause, though – _who would your partner say sleeps wit more of themselves exposed? You or them?_

It seemed like a simple enough question, but Percy found himself very obviously overthinking it, conscious of what everyone else might think about whatever he ended up writing down. If he and Piper didn’t get this one right, the others might think it was weird. Percy should know about what Piper slept in and vice versa, and he did to a degree, but couples had different sleeping habits with each other than they did with friends. This was easily the stupidest crisis Percy had ever experienced.

“I sleep with more exposed,” Percy decided, flipping his notepad over to assure the group he hadn’t changed it after the timer ran out. Waiting for Piper to confirm or deny shouldn’t have worried him as much as it did, especially because, in the end, they were yet again on exactly the same page. Piper also thought Percy slept with more exposed.

Nico and Hazel recouped their missed point on that question, since Jason and Annabeth made another mistake – Annabeth said she slept with more exposed (another mental image Percy had to quickly fight to dispel), while Jason’s actual answer was himself. Percy smothered a laugh as Annabeth glared at Jason for missing that question, but the game continued without another word.

  


* * *

  


If Jason hadn’t been sure Annabeth intended to murder him for his untimely confession that morning, he was confident she would murder him over how miserably they lost Hazel’s game.

It was downright humiliating. Percy and Piper had played a perfect game, not missing a single question. Nico and Hazel came in a distant second, but Jason and Annabeth did so miserably that they ended up getting more answers wrong than right. He’d been confident they would kick ass going in, because he thought he knew just about everything there was to know about Annabeth, and yet that dumb game was beginning to make him think maybe he didn’t know anything about her at all.

Just for the sake of avoiding Annabeth’s glare, Jason asked Hazel where he might go for a bit of fresh air. She directed him toward the apartment’s back door and its very small balcony with a nice view of the city, a couple metal chairs, and a small side table. It was nothing fancy, but it more than served Jason’s purpose.

He had just taken his first puff of a cigarette when the sliding door opened and Piper stepped out. “I had a feeling this was why you asked where you could get _fresh air_.”

“I always need a smoke after losing,” he explained, though it wasn’t the defensive kind of explanation he would have felt the need to give anyone else. There was no need to justify his desire for a cigarette with Piper, no judgment in her eyes or voice. She understood, wouldn’t lecture him until her face turned blue about all the reasons smoking was terrible for him.

“Spare one for a friend?” Piper asked, plopping into the balcony’s second chair.

“Do you _really_ smoke or is this all just some elaborate joke you’re playing on me?” Jason replied, laughing lightly, but he fished his pack out and passed it over to her all the same.

“Actually,” she started, picking a cigarette out of the pack and then handing the rest back to him, “I have a pack in my purse, you just make a lot more money than me, so I am going to bum a smoke off you at every opportunity.”

Jason laughed again, passing Piper his lighter once he had tucked his pack back away. “So, you’re taking advantage of my generosity.”

“Correct,” she confirmed, utterly shameless, and lit up.

For a moment, Jason sat in silence, his gaze fixed on the cityscape before him. In the distance, almost further than the eye could see, he could just make out a construction he’d worked on at the firm, a state of the art office building that would tower over New York City for decades, maybe even centuries, to come. Almost an entire year of his life had been poured into that project. It was something to be proud of, and yet he felt completely indifferent seeing it now, almost complete. In all honesty, he was mostly just relieved his part in it was over and that he didn’t have to worry about it anymore. Now he worried about other projects instead.

“Are you that upset about getting your ass kicked?” Piper asked, her voice startling him out of his thoughts. He gaped at her momentarily, so Piper laughed and flicked her cigarette into the ashtray already on the balcony’s small table – Frank and Hazel must have entertained often, if they had one sitting around like that. “I’m like halfway through this thing and you’ve barely said a word to me.”

“I’m pretty sure Annabeth will never forgive me for not remembering she used to prefer vodka to tequila, but I’m okay,” Jason replied, shaking his head apologetically. It hadn’t been his intention to ignore Piper.

“Then what’s on your mind?” she asked, her eyes practically burning holes through him with how intent they were on their target.

He considered shrugging the question off. To Piper, it probably seemed like Jason had it made, with a job he liked and had worked hard for, a well paid position at a respectable firm with no student loans and a career path perfectly laid out before him. She didn’t need to hear him whine and gripe about stupid little things that made no sense when life had handed her such a bum rap in that department. Something about the way she continued to stare at him, full of genuine curiosity and a hint of concern, made Jason want to spill his guts, though. Piper understood about the smoking, so maybe she would understand about this, too.

“You see that building they’re putting up,” Jason started, pointing in the direction he’d been staring earlier. “The one that has all the scaffolding on the side of it?”

“Barely,” Piper replied with a snort, stretching her neck forward and squinting out at the city. “Do you have freakish eagle eyes or something?”

The idea of him having anything close to _eagle eyes_ made Jason want to laugh, but he just smiled and continued, “I worked on it. That was my first real, big project, and I only got it because one of the partners at our firm had to take time off for medical leave.”

“And that’s… upsetting?” she asked, confused but, as he suspected, not judgmental.

“Not upsetting, not exactly,” he said, slumping back in his chair and taking a long, final drag from his cigarette before putting it out in the ashtray. “I’m just kind of indifferent about it. Annabeth is always so excited when a project she worked on goes up. She even got excited about her first, which was just this ugly, utilitarian and practical warehouse over in Jersey. I just don’t really feel anything. It’s right there, smack in the middle of the city, and it might as well not be there at all, for what it inspires in me.”

At first, Piper didn’t say anything, finishing her cigarette in contemplative silence. When she put it out and exhaled her final puff of smoke, she huffed a quiet laugh. “That’s how I feel every single time I shoot a picture at this stupid job I’m working. I mean, I’m not saying they should be anything to be proud of to begin with, really, but the customers usually like them. If they’re happy, I should be happy, but I never am. All I can ever think of is how I could have done it better outside of that dumb studio, or even with some more interesting back drops, or with even a little more creative control. We’re really boxed in with what we’re allowed to do so there’s corporate consistency and all that bullshit.”

“You know why it’s disappointing, at least,” he said, letting out a heavy sigh. “I have no idea why I feel so empty.”

“Didn’t you say your specialty is like, sustainability and stuff?” she asked, crossing her legs as if settling in for a long conversation, a motion Jason pretended he didn’t watch so closely, with her startlingly long legs bare in those shorts. It had to have been cold.

“And stuff, yeah,” Jason confirmed, unable to keep a sly grin of amusement off his lips. “Why?”

Piper glared for a second or two, a teasing expression in response to his tone, and then laughed. “It’s just – if what gets you excited about your job, what you were so interested in you decided to make it your whole focus of study, is like, environmental and sustainability stuff, maybe building skyscrapers and adding more clutter to this mess of a city isn’t for you.”

There was a degree of audacity to what Piper had just suggested, considering the fact that they barely knew each other and had only shared a handful of conversations, but Jason wasn’t offended. That kind of shamelessness was what made Piper so charming, and her brash brand of honesty was something rare and refreshing. No one had ever so much as dared to suggest something like that to Jason, that he might want to rethink his goals or career bath, not when he had always been so successful, but Piper said the words with ease and sincerity.

“Our firm is one of the biggest in the world,” Jason replied, the sensible argument he had always used to convince himself he was on the right path. “The difference I can make there might not be groundbreaking or glamorous, but eventually it’ll be big. That’s one of the greenest office buildings in the entire city.”

“But it doesn’t make you happy,” Piper reminded him, a hint of sadness in her voice, like his unhappiness made her unhappy, too.

“Neither does your job,” he argued, equally saddened by her lot in life.

“Mine is just a stepping stone, though,” she pressed, head tilted to one side as she studied him across that very small outdoor table between them. “This isn’t where I plan on staying.”

He knew she had a point there. This was, more or less, the end of the road for Jason, the thing he would be doing for the rest of his life. Stability was what Jason wanted, though. That included a stable, normal job, even if it wasn’t as exciting or adventurous as he might have once dreamed.

It had been the instability of Zeus’ political career that led to his and Beryl’s marital problems. All that time away from home campaigning had resulted in him seeking comfort from women who weren’t his wife, the insecurity and uncertainty creating a wedge between him and Beryl. That didn’t excuse the affairs, but Jason would not get caught in that same situation. A stable job, a sensible and trustworthy partner, those were the things Jason wanted and needed most, not excitement or adventure. Those two words – _stability, sensibility_ – had been hammered into his head all his life, both by his friends and family, and by Jason himself. As he approached thirty, they seemed more important than ever.

“Once I’ve got some seniority at the firm, I can choose my own projects and get more creative,” he told Piper, yet another argument he tended to use on himself. “This is still kind of a stepping stone for me, too.”

Though she didn’t look convinced, Piper nodded. “I should head back in. We can’t stay much longer if I’m going to make it to work on time.”

“Thanks for keeping me company out here,” Jason said, once again digging into his pocket. This time he presented a pack of Listerine breath strips and offered them to her. “Annabeth always complains about my breath after I smoke, but these do a good job of covering the stink.”

Piper stared down at the strips for a couple seconds, a strange look on her face, but then she reached out to take one out of the tiny pack and gently placed it on her tongue. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Jason.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Piper.”

  


* * *

  


Nico had to leave almost as soon as they finished their game. He asked the others to say goodbye to Jason and Piper – who Percy suspected were out on the balcony having a smoke – goodbye for him. Percy shook Nico’s hand and hoped to see him again soon, then Hazel excused herself to walk Nico down to the street and see him off safely since he’d come alone. That left Percy and Annabeth on their own in a very quiet and unfamiliar living room, with two very big dogs who suddenly decided Percy was their favorite person and both jumped into his lap.

“So,” Percy said into the awkward silence, one hand scratching each dog behind the ear, “you’re not going to accuse me of cheating this time?”

In a blink, Annabeth snapped her head toward him to glare, an expression that was becoming increasingly less intimidating the more she used it on him. “It seems like you won fair and square for once, so no. You can have this single victory.”

“Just this one?” he asked, eyebrows raised in a very purposeful taunt.

“Don’t push your luck,” she told him, but her glare was already beginning to soften into a smile.

“Sorry,” Percy said, without a single shred of actual remorse. “I would be sensitive if I’d just had my ass so unceremoniously handed to me, too.”

The smile that had been tugging at her lips finally spread all the way across Annabeth’s face. “It’s a good thing we don’t see each other very often, because I’m not sure I could handle more than a few hours of you a month.”

Percy didn’t believe her for a second, not with the way she continued to smile, wider than she’d managed through the entirety of the morning and afternoon. The whole time Annabeth had been tense and grumpy, and now that Percy took the time to really look at her, he could see signs that she had been crying – puffy eyes, a little blood shot, and makeup that seemed like it had been a rush job to repair something more extensive she’d ruined with tears. If Annabeth had fought with Jason before getting to Hazel’s, it must have been a big one.

“Are you okay?” Percy asked as soon as the impulse hit him. He didn’t know her well enough to ask tings like that. Despite his crush, Percy could admit he barely knew Annabeth at all, even if he desperately wanted to know her _better_.

Her smile faltered. “Why?”

“It’s just,” Percy waved his hand in front of his face, Hannibal snorting a complaint because the gesture took that hand away from the dog’s head, “looks like you were crying before you got here.”

“Oh,” she replied, smile disappearing completely, replaced by a slightly embarrassed flush across her cheeks and lips pressed into a thin line. “It was just a rough morning.”

“A fight with your boyfriend on Valentine’s Day would be rough on anyone,” Percy conceded, not taking any joy from the idea of Annabeth and Jason fighting. Crush or no, he didn’t wish anything bad on her relationship.

Wetting her lips, Annabeth studied him across the living room, her expression slightly pained. “Jason and I didn’t fight,” she finally said, shaking her head.

“What happened, then?” Asking should have felt like prying, and inappropriate for their level of acquaintance, but Percy was pretty sure Annabeth would tell him to fuck right off if he’d crossed any kind of line.

For a moment Percy thought she might do that very thing, but then she sighed and looked back up at him, her guard lowered. “A while back this guy I’d been seeing for literal years, who I _lived with_ , decided to dump me the day before Valentine’s Day. This morning I woke up to news that he just got engaged to the woman he dumped me for.”

“Wow,” Percy replied, blinking in surprise. That was certainly not what Percy had expected her problem to be, but in context it made even the tension with Jason make sense – him being upset about his girlfriend feeling so affected by the news of an ex was also a totally valid reaction.

“And now you know the _two_ most embarrassing things that have ever happened to me,” Annabeth said, her voice shaky. She was very clearly already beginning to regret having told Percy that particular secret. “I’m sorry, I just – I don’t know why I keep telling you these things. You can forget I said anything. I really am sorry for unloading like that.”

“No, don’t apologize,” he told her, quick to shake his head and dispel her concerns. “I actually still owe you an embarrassing story of my own.”

Some of the rosy color began to fade from Annabeth’s cheeks and she dropped her gaze to her hands in her lap, fingers tangled and twisting in a nervous display. With her eyes diverted, Percy allowed himself a moment to stare. She really did look beautiful that afternoon, over dressed or not. Since he now knew the source of the tension between them, since they hadn’t fought, Percy wondered if a romantic dinner was still in the future for Annabeth and Jason that night. The idea certainly inspired a fair amount of jealousy in him. Under just about any other circumstances, Percy would ask her out to dinner with _him_ right there on the spot, and he thought that dream of a dinner would be the greatest date of his life.

“You don’t owe me anything,” Annabeth assured him. “Have you forgotten the deal we made?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Percy said, because he had thought about that deal every single day since New Year’s Eve, even when otherwise avoiding thoughts of Annabeth entirely. “We never kissed, though, which means you didn’t get what you were owed.”

Annabeth glanced back up at him, the corners of her lips twitching upward. “I didn’t get what I was owed, you’re right.”

Percy was lucky that Piper chose that moment to walk back in from outside. If she had been even a second later, he might have said something he would’ve regretted – like offering Annabeth that kiss now, in lieu of an embarrassing anecdote. Curiosity written all over her face, Piper glanced between Percy and Annabeth for a few seconds before pointing her thumb toward the apartment’s entrance over her shoulder. “We should probably head out if I’m going to make it to work on time.”

“Right,” Percy replied, glancing at the clock on Hazel’s entertainment center. “Is Hazel back from walking Nico down yet?”

“I didn’t see her,” Piper answered, shaking her head.

“Hopefully we can catch her on our way out, then,” he said, struggling to redirect his thoughts from that dangerous path they’d just meandered down.

When Percy stood, both dogs upset to be disturbed when they were just settling in, Annabeth did, too, but her attention had also turned full to Piper. “Are we still on for Friday?”

“Absolutely,” Piper confirmed, holding out her arms for a hug goodbye. Annabeth quickly obliged, stepping deftly around the coffee table and into Piper’s waiting arms to be wrapped up in a warm, friendly embrace. Over Annabeth’s shoulder, Piper gave Percy a quizzical look. Of course she’d picked up on the weird energy building between him and Annabeth in like two seconds.

As the three of them congregated in the entryway, Jason also returned from outside, surprised to see them all rounded up together and tripping over bulldogs. He came up beside Annabeth, a hand placed on the small of her back, and spoke a couple whispered words to her. Some tension returned to her shoulders in response to his touch, but overall she seemed more at ease than she had the rest of the day, even managing to give Jason a small smile. Percy hoped that meant their short conversation had somehow helped her.

They all exchanged awkward pleasantries and parting words while collecting their jackets from the hooks by the door. Percy dropped down to say goodbye to Hannibal and Arion, Piper laughing at him when he was unceremoniously covered in dog slobber. Just as Percy and Piper were about to walk out, Hazel came back in, and then pleasantries and parting words had to be exchanged all over again. By the time they were headed out, Percy thought he would lose his mind entirely if he had to say _goodbye_ one more time, but Jason and Annabeth were right there with him and Piper, stepping into the elevator.

It was easily the most uncomfortable elevator ride of Percy’s life, though he had no idea why they all seemed so equally tense. In the most predictable turn of events in history, Piper was the one to break the silence, pointing to the overhead speaker, which quietly played an instrumental version Taylor Swift’s _Love Story_. “Have you heard the new version of this she just released.”

Because he lived with Piper and she had always made sure he knew if Taylor Swift so much as breathed heavier than usual, Percy had, indeed, heard the new version of that song. The other two occupants of the elevator, however, both shook their heads. While Percy did not personally have anything against Ms. Swift, he did envy the other two their ignorance. The song had been on repeat at the apartment since the minute it had been released earlier that week.

“It’s honestly even more amazing than the original, really showcases her growth,” Piper told them, rocking back and forth on her heels and nodding slowly. “You should check it out. Today’s the perfect day for it, too.”

“I definitely will,” Jason replied, just as the elevator dinged and the doors opened. Percy didn’t miss the surprise that flashed across Annabeth’s features.

Spilling out into the apartment lobby, the group moved as a strange little unit toward the front doors. Outside was colder than expected, the wind having picked up since Percy had arrived that morning, but thankfully he hadn’t needed to park too far away. Apparently the pairs were headed in opposite directions, though, so they stopped right outside to bid adieu one final time.

Under her breath, right before they parted ways, Annabeth warned Percy, “I’m going to collect on that debt the next time I see you. Make sure you’re ready.”

There was no chance for Percy to reply, as Annabeth hurried down the sidewalk to follow Jason just as soon as the words had left her mouth. Percy ignored the knowing look on Piper’s face as he turned to head toward his own car. He also pretended those words hadn’t made him smile so embarrassingly easily.

  


* * *

  


The car ride back to Annabeth’s apartment was just as unbearably awkward as the ride to Hazel’s had been, even if Annabeth no longer seemed so angry at him. Jason knew he ought to start up a conversation about what he’d said that morning, but he was a coward and he held his tongue.

When they pulled up to Annabeth’s building and Jason found a parking spot, he killed the engine and sat back to wait and see what she might do. Annabeth didn’t say anything, but she didn’t move to get out of the car and run off, either. They just sat there in silence, both mulling over the situation they’d found themselves in – or, well, the situation Jason had created.

Jason had already said everything that had been on his mind leading up to that morning, more or less, even if his delivery hadn’t been ideal. That didn’t mean there was nothing left to say, though. If anything, the poor delivery of his confession was actually just more reason for him to speak up now. He owed it to Annabeth to take the initiative to clear the air himself, he just didn’t know where to start. After taking an entire month to work up to what he’d said earlier, a few hours just didn’t seem like enough to work out what else to say.

“Did you mean it?” Annabeth finally asked, voice uncharacteristically small. “Before we left for brunch, I mean,”

“I did,” Jason confirmed, mouth gone dry.

“And you’ve really been thinking about it for over a month?” she continued, her eyes locked on her hands.

“I have,” he said, not allowing even a hint of doubt to seep into his voice.

No matter how poorly they’d performed in that game back at Hazel’s, Jason still believed Annabeth knew him better than anyone on the planet. She knew Jason would never treat something like this lightly, and that, if he said he had been thinking about something that long, it meant he’d been _thinking_ about it. She also knew that if he brought it up with her, all that thinking had led him to the conclusion that confessing his feelings was the right course of action.

“Do you have any plans today?” Annabeth asked, finally lifting her head to look at him. Mouth still very dry, he could only manage to shake his head. She turned her gaze straight ahead, but not down, determination now in her steely eyed gaze. “Want to come up?”

“To talk?” he asked, heart beginning to pound. There was no way she had meant that loaded question as a simple proposition to just _talk_.

“To have sex, Jason,” she replied flatly, the roll of her eyes so exaggerated he could practically hear it in her voice. “That’s really all that’s left, right? This won’t work if we can’t bring ourselves to actually have sex, or if we don’t enjoy it. So, we give it a shot and see what happens.”

The way she said it sounded so clinical, but Jason couldn’t help finding himself agreeing, even if a little voice in the back of his mind tried to object. “You don’t think we should like, work our way up to it? Go on a real date or something?”

“We’d both be too hung up thinking about the inevitability of sex to focus on enjoying a date right now,” Annabeth reasoned, still laying it out in the same may she might present a pitch to a client, but, Jason supposed, that was part of why this felt like the right thing to do. These things made sense, the way they both thought things through was so similar, all of it adding up to a picture that seemed as close to perfect as Jason could ever hope to find. “This way, we know if it’s not going to work. We won’t have to suffer through awkward dates trying to get to this point. If it does work, then dates will be great, like hanging out with sex at the end.”

“Hanging out with sex at the end does sound nice,” he agreed. It had also been a painfully long time since Jason had last had sex and the idea of unexpectedly getting some that day appealed to him more than he would ever have the courage to admit.

Annabeth nodded and wasted no time in undoing her buckle. In the blink of an eye, she had opened her door and stepped onto the sidewalk. Jason had to hurry to catch up to her, almost forgetting to lock his car as he jogged around to the sidewalk after her. The speed with which she moved gave him no time to second guess himself, and he supposed that was the whole reason for her rushing, too, to keep herself from second guessing her decision.

They had to stop at the elevator to wait, though, and as they stood there, Annabeth pushed the call button frantically. Every second they waited there was another second doubt could take hold. If she didn’t live on the fifth floor, Jason might have opted to take the stairs just to work out his own nervous energy, but he would need that energy once they made it to her apartment.

Stepping into the elevator, his heart kicked into overdrive. Neither of them spoke a word, and she kept her eyes trained straight ahead, but he couldn’t help stealing glances – at the sharp rise and fall of her chest, her tongue sliding across her bottom lip, the nervous way she shifted from foot to foot. Summoning as much courage as he’d ever possessed, Jason reached across the inches that separated them to take Annabeth’s hand, and that familiar sensation grounded him, calming the pounding of his heart. They’d never been ones for holding hands or physical affection often, but the way that simple touch eased his anxiety made him wonder why they hadn’t made it a habit much sooner.

That elevator ride felt like it took an entire lifetime, but eventually the doors opened again, and then Annabeth led him by hand down the hall toward her apartment door.

Once inside, they took their time slipping out of their jackets and hanging them by the door, treating that mundane task like some kind of ritual. Jason’s heart didn’t go back to racing, but the world did take on a surreal haze around him, like it was preparing to be seen through a brand new filter in the wake of what he and Annabeth were about to do. A line in their relationship was about to be crossed and, for better or worse, they would never be able to uncross it. He hoped they were crossing it for the better, but he knew, and believed sh did too, that there was a real chance they might be crossing it for the worse.

Annabeth stepped further into her apartment, playing nervously with the skirt of her dress as she went. She stopped in the middle of her living room, a space almost as familiar to Jason as Annabeth herself, after all the time he had spent there over the years. Taking a deep breath, she turned to face him. “So.”

“So,” Jason agreed, swallowing hard. He’d half expected to lose his nerve once they got to this point, but his courage somehow remained intact.

Jason took one step forward, then another, and Annabeth stayed fixed in place, letting him go to her. He had been the one to start this, so it was up to him to see it through. When he stood in front of her, Annabeth lifted her chin to meet his eye. One, final time he asked himself if he was making the right decision. His fears of making a mistake were reflected in her eyes, wide, searching, and vulnerable in a way he’d never seen them before, and that was how Jason knew it could never really be a mistake. Even if it all went wrong, there would be no crossing this line for the worse. Either it would be for the better or they would find a way to fix whatever damage they might’ve accidentally done to their friendship.

Lifting his hand to her face, Jason cupped Annabeth’s cheek in his palm and watched her eyes flutter closed. She took a shuddering breath, tilting her head into his touch. Without another thought, he leaned down and kissed her – a better kiss than the one they’d shared on New Year’s Eve, since he wasn’t quite as scared of it and they both knew what to expect this time. Her lips tasted faintly of citrus. Annabeth stepped closer after the initial, teasing brushing of lips, opened herself up to him, and he wound his arm around her waist to draw her even further in.

“The breath strip was a nice touch,” Annabeth whispered against his lips when, after a minute or so of slow, tentative kissing, they parted to let the weight of the moment settle between them.

Those words were so quintessentially Annabeth that they soothed the final hints of anxiety still gnawing at Jason’s heart. When he tilted his head to kiss her again, all tentativeness was gone, and he found Annabeth responded very well to his newfound assertiveness. They didn’t spend much more time in her living room after that, but they did leave her dress behind right there on the floor.

  


* * *

  


“Can we stop for candy?” Piper requested, after she and Percy had been on the road headed toward Jersey for all of five minutes. Honestly, he was just surprised that was the first thing she said, rather than commenting on Annabeth’s parting warning.

“You had two slices of cake after brunch and now you want candy?” Percy asked in reply, stealing a quick, skeptical glance at her.

Piper’s bottom lip was turned into a dissatisfied pout and she sat slumped in her seat, arms crossed. “I’m not getting laid today, so I might as well eat my weight in chocolate while I have the chance.”

“It’s not too late to get laid, you know,” he reminded her. Plenty of bars and clubs would be open long past the end of her shift and Percy didn’t think she was scheduled to work the next day. A Valentine’s Day hookup might not be as enjoyable as actual romance, but if that was what she wanted, there was still plenty of time to get it.

“Are you offering?” she challenged, a slight edge to her voice that Percy knew from frustration over her singleness and not anything he’d said or done.

In an attempt to improve her mood with a little teasing, Percy decided to meet Piper’s challenge. “And if I am?”

Without missing a beat, Piper pretended to gag herself.

“I’m very happy to know you find me so repulsive,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. At least the show of disgust was better than her sulking had been.

“The problem isn’t you being repulsive. You’re actually quite attractive in your own unkempt, gym teacher kind of way,” Piper assured him, though her nose remaining wrinkled didn’t really back up the sentiment. “The problem is, I know where your dick has been.”

Percy couldn’t help barking a laugh, if only because he had not expected that response. “Are you slut shaming me, Pipes?”

“No,” she quickly replied, finally breaking into a smile of her own. “Slut shaming would mean I take issue with the number of partners you’ve had. My complaint is not about quantity, it’s about _quality_.”

Even though he shouldn’t be rewarding her for insulting him, Percy guided the car into a parking spot right outside the first bodega he spotted after her candy request. “That’s a very brave thing to say, considering we’ve slept with a few of the same people.”

“We’ve slept with a few of the same _women_ ,” Piper corrected, a point Percy had to give her. “Your taste in women is impeccable. Your taste in men is complete, disgusting trash. It’s like you’re a magnet for the worst guys on the planet.”

“Go get your fucking candy before I decide we’re no longer friends and strand you here,” Percy replied, knowing better than to argue the subject with her. Piper was kind of right. 

As she jumped out of the car and jogged into the store to get herself some candy, Percy spent his time alone thinking over the implications of that truth Piper had so plainly laid out, even though it wasn’t the first time she’d mentioned it. Any other day he might have wallowed in self pity over his bad taste in men – which he, unfortunately, had to admit to – but that afternoon all he could think about was her claim he had impeccable taste in women. In particular, Percy’s mind settled on one specific woman.

Annabeth certainly would fit neatly into that category of his superior taste. Even Piper thought Annabeth was great (and hot, but plenty of _hot_ people were not _great_ , which was how Percy had ended up with so many trashy guys over the years). It didn’t seem fair that he had met one of the most beguiling women ever under such unfortunate circumstances. He’d spend Valentine’s Day with her, and yet she was another man’s Valentine. They connected _so well_ , and yet it was too dangerous for them to explore that connection, if only because of Percy’s crush on her. With all that and more standing between them, he wondered if this might actually be a rare example of terrible taste in women, just because his feelings caused so many problems. Maybe bad judgment was just universal.

When Piper returned a few minutes later, she had an overly full bag of junk in hand and a smile on her face. “You know, I do have to give you credit for your massive crush on Charlie back in the day, even if that was just puppy love and never reciprocated,” she told Percy, completely unprompted, as she passed him a bottle of Coke, also completely unprompted. “I probably would have had a crush on Charlie if I had met him first, too.”

“So that’s one out of how many?” Percy asked, taking the bottle with a smile in thanks for her thoughtfulness. He hadn’t even mentioned wanting one, but he kind of always wanted one, which Piper knew better than anyone.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Perce,” she replied, pulling a small, heart shaped box out of her bag and beginning to peel off the plastic enclosing it. “But, think of it this way – before long, you’re going to have hooked up with all the shitty men in New York City and then you’ll have nothing but decent guys left to choose from.”

“Is this your indirect way of telling me I need to go hook up with someone to get over Annabeth?” he asked, finally firing the car back up to start on their way again.

Shoving a ball of now crumpled plastic into her bag, Piper didn’t immediately reply, instead opening her cheap candy box and reading the inside cover to see what each little chocolate was filled with. After dropping the first candy into her mouth and taking a minute to savor it, she finally decided to reply, “I never said anything about Annabeth, but if that’s where your mind went, maybe you’re trying to tell _yourself_ something.”

Percy considered that possibility. It didn’t sound like the worst idea in the world, but he’d never been good at hooking up in general, and especially not when he had feelings for someone else already. His frustration was at an all time high, though. Maybe putting himself out there would help get his mind of Annabeth just long enough to get over his feelings for her. He knew he needed to get over his feelings, but for some inexplicable reason he just didn’t want to. Something in his gut told him not to do anything rash, and Percy had learned a long time ago that going with his gut was usually the right thing to do, even if his instincts seemed crazy.

“Have you ever been in a situation like this before, hung up on someone when it’s so obviously hopeless?” Percy asked, stealing another glance at Piper when they stopped at a red light.

Over the years, Percy and Piper had always been open with each other about their crushes and relationships. Percy was pretty sure he could name every single person Piper had so much as considered cute, and vise versa. That didn’t mean Percy hadn’t kept a few secrets, and he figured Piper had a few of her own still tucked away somewhere, too. One of those experiences she had never confided about might have left her with insight into how to overcome this unwelcome crush, or at least help explain that gut feeling of his.

“I can’t say I’ve ever been here before, no,” Piper unfortunately answered, picking up one of the dark chocolate covered confections and staring it down. Percy might have thought it had personally offended her somehow, but she tossed it in her mouth all the same. “You’ll get over it eventually, though. You’re too good a person for fate to leave you miserable forever.”

Piper slowly sunk back into her seat again after that, going back to sulking while she popped chocolates into her mouth one after the other and stared despondently out her window. Something was definitely on her mind and Percy knew her well enough not to write it off as simply wishing she could get laid on Valentine’s Day. If she didn’t want to tell him about it, though, there was no sense in trying to get her to spill. Her decided, intentional silence told him she was not yet in the mood to talk about whatever those thoughts were, but hopefully she wouldn’t remain so closed off about it for long.

“Call if you feel weird taking the train home so late tonight,” Percy told Piper when they finally pulled up to the mall she now worked out of.

“I take the train that late all the time,” Piper replied, rolling her eyes at him. They both considered public transit fairly safe, but sometimes he couldn’t help worrying about her traveling so far on her own every night. “I’ll see you later. Don’t party too hard without me.”

His night would include no partying, but Percy didn’t go straight home after dropping Piper off. While on the bridge crossing back into the city, he was struck by an idea and decided to make a detour. 

It had been a few years since he’d last visited, but Percy swung by the small candy shop Silena’s dad owned and operated, greeted by her father’s wide and welcoming smile. Mr. Beauregard gave Percy a family discount on the pile of artisanal chocolates he decided to buy, even though it had been so long since they’d seen each other. After that, Percy stopped at the flower shop next door to pick up a simple bouquet of yellow roses – he hadn’ t know what he was going to get going in, but he wanted roses since it _was_ Valentine’s Day and the clerk told him yellow symbolized friendship. Both places were crazy busy for the holiday, but since Percy had nowhere to be, he didn’t mind spending his time waiting.

Back at home, he found a vase for the flowers and set them on the kitchen counter along with the box of chocolates and a simple note so Piper would know they were for her when she got in, even if he’d already gone to sleep. Just because the girl he liked was with another guy that night didn’t mean Percy couldn’t have a Valentine of his own, and those chocolates would be a lot more satisfying for Piper than the cheap, mass produced stuff she’d picked up at that bodega. All things considered, it hadn’t been the worst Valentine’s Day of his life, but he sure hoped next year would be better.

  


* * *

  


So, they’d made a mistake. A very big mistake. They’d made a very big, very naked, mistake, but at least _this_ mistake they’d made together.

Jason lay in Annabeth’s bed beside her, staring up at the at the ceiling in mutual, awkward silence. It had started out okay, even enjoyable. Kissing had been fun and felt good, seeing her naked not nearly as weird as he’d expected it to be, and being seen naked by her not particularly uncomfortable. At some point around the getting naked, though, their little sex train had gone off the rails.

Their problem, he figured, while laying there deep in contemplation, was that neither of them had been able to get out of their own heads. He could never quite stop thinking about the fact that it was _Annabeth_ he was doing all those things with, and that was weird. Likewise, he suspected she struggled to accept that _he_ was the one on the other end of everything. No matter how good something had objectively felt, or how attractive he truly did find her, those mental blocks were just too much to overcome.

A small, very guilty, part of him also wondered if one other thing had made it all go wrong. His heart was in another place. Jason didn’t want it to be elsewhere, but it seemed to be there regardless, of its own volition. Not once in his life had he been so out of control of his own feelings. He’d always been able to predict which way they would go and guide them along, but this time they refused to hear reason or obey his wishes. It scared him. It also excited him just as much.

“Leo can never know this happened,” Annabeth finally said, her voice almost echoing through the silence. “If you so much as breathe a word of it to him, I’ll murder you both.”

“ _That’s_ what you’re thinking about right now?” Jason replied, laughing, because it was so ridiculous that she might be thinking about something so trivial while he had been on the brink of a crisis.

“What were you thinking about?” she asked, finally turning her head to look directly at him. At least she still could. That was a good sign for the future of their friendship.

There was no way Jason would confess to everything on his mind when she’d been so nonchalant, so he wracked his mind for anything else he could come up with. “I was kind of wondering if you–”

“No,” Annabeth answered, not even allowing him to finish the thought. Whatever expression Jason wore in response to that must have made her feel bad, because she quickly added, “It’s not your fault. I mean, you were doing all the right things, and it’s not like you didn’t try. I just… couldn’t relax, I guess.”

“I was going to say, you kind of called me off the foreplay before you were done,” he agreed, though thinking about it now, not half an hour later, already made him smile in amusement. With every passing minute it seemed more absurd to him that they’d even considered this.

Annabeth sighed, turning her head to stare at the ceiling once again. “I’m sorry. It got to a point I just kind of wanted it to be over.”

“You could have stopped the whole thing if you were feeling that uncomfortable, I wouldn’t have been upset,” Jason said, taking his turn to look over at her. It was a comfort to know he could still look at her without it being weird, as well.

To be fair to Annabeth, Jason had felt the same about wanting it to just kind of be over while also not wanting to be the one to call it off. At least he had finished, though. Knowing she had only experienced the discomfort left him with a pile of guilt a mile high. He’d sensed something was off pretty early on. He should have taken the initiative to put a stop to it.

“It wasn’t like it was _bad_ ,” Annabeth said, clearly attempting to make Jason feel better about the whole thing. “It felt… nice. Like I said, you did all the right things. I wasn’t suffering or anything, and I’ve actually had much worse.”

“And much better,” he concluded.

Chuckling in clear confirmation of his assessment, Annabeth flung her arm at Jason to smack him in the chest. “You’re so annoying. I can’t believe I let you make me think this was anything but the worst idea ever.”

“Never listen to me again,” Jason agreed, managing to echo her laugh with a little one of his own. Laughing released a knot that had formed in his chest and Jason finally found himself beginning to relax, even though they were both still very much naked and in Annabeth’s bed.

“Absolutely never,” Annabeth said, laughing a little harder now that Jason had let one out.

“I should probably go,” he decided, finally sitting up. That created the problem of having to be seen naked again, but he supposed he would just have to suffer through the hint of embarrassment.

“Now _that’s_ actually a good idea,” she said, nodding but not moving an inch herself. Jason assumed – hoped – that meant she planned to keep staring at the ceiling to give him some privacy. “You have my permission to leave.”

Being given permission made Jason laugh again, rubbing his hands over his face a few times before finally moving to actually get up. It took him several seconds to locate his underwear. Apparently he and Annabeth had still been wrapped up in the excitement of anticipation when those had come off, because they were flung across the room. Having at least that much coverage made Jason much more comfortable, so he didn’t feel quite as panicked as he moved on to locating the rest of his clothes.

Also seeming put at ease by Jason being slightly covered, Annabeth sat up in bed, adjusting the blankets to secure them around her chest. “Do you think maybe part of the reason that was so weird was because we were both, like, thinking of other people?”

“You were thinking of someone else?” Jason asked, freezing in place to stare at her, his pants in hand.

“Not exactly,” she replied, averting her gaze and shifting uncomfortably. “It’s not like I was _picturing_ anyone else, just… I don’t know. Nevermind.”

What Annabeth described sounded exactly like what Jason found himself theorizing over. He hadn’t been thinking about Piper specifically while wrapped up in the moment with Annabeth, but his mind didn’t have to be thinking about her specifically for him to have been distracted. With more clarity of mind, Jason realized he should have known better all along than to try this with Annabeth when there had been even a tiny bit of conflict in his heart, acknowledged conflict or not. That hadn’t been fair to her and it hadn’t been fair to himself.

He was a second away from apologizing for being a jerk when the implication of what she’d asked hit him full force. “Wait, who were you thinking about?”

“No one,” Annabeth said, too quick, her voice a little too tight.

“Was it someone from work?” he pressed, because it had to be _someone_ if she had thought to ask Jason that question at all. “Is it that new guy in accounting? He’s been making a lot of excuses to swing by your office the last couple weeks.”

“it’s not anyone from work,” she said with a sigh.

“But it’s someone,” Jason concluded, only then beginning to get dressed once again. He stopped again with one leg in his pants, almost falling over. “Is it Piper?”

“ _No_ ,” Annabeth replied firmly. “Please just drop it.”

The only reason Jason decided to do as she asked was because they were already on such thin ice. Jason didn’t want to press his luck, or risk damaging their relationship after it had miraculously survived that little disaster he’d orchestrated. So, he nodded and resumed getting his pants on, then started the hunt for his shirt.

“I took it off you in the living room,” Annabeth told him after a minute of his poking around her room produced only his socks.

“Right,” he replied, and then ducked out of her room to go retrieve it. Jason had just picked his shirt up off the floor when yet another thought occurred to him and he rushed back to the doorway of Annabeth’s room. “Wait, who do you think _I_ was thinking of?”

She stared at him like he was the biggest idiot she had ever seen, and then let out an exasperated sigh. “Have you ever voluntarily, purposefully listened to a Taylor Swift song in your life, Jason?”

“I was being polite,” he said, knowing he sounded way too defensive. Annabeth had hit the nail right on the head. When she continued to blink at him in disbelief, it was his turn to sigh. “If you knew, why did you suggest this?”

Taking a deep breath and shrugging, Annabeth replied, “I guess I thought since, you know, she’s in a relationship, that it didn’t really matter. I know you would never pursue her while she’s dating someone, and I didn’t really mind being your second choice.”

His shoulders slumped at that admission and Jason couldn’t believe he had let this happen without properly talking it through first. “You should never be anyone’s second choice.”

“It wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” she said, voice saturated with melancholy, and Jason watched as she picked at her comforter. “I know I was being stupid. No hard feelings, I promise.”

“I’ll take your word for it, since there are no hard feelings on this side, either,” he assured her. While he didn’t know who she harbored secret feelings for, Jason couldn’t say for certain that he hadn’t known her heart had been elsewhere all along, too. In his desperation for something safe and comfortable, the pure desire to make this work because it seemed so damn _sensible_ , he probably just hadn’t wanted to see it. “And you’re right about Piper. I’m not going to do anything about it, but I can admit she’s… I don’t know exactly, but I sure do wish things were different.”

“Me too,” Annabeth agreed, giving him a reassuring smile. “Thanks for the Valentine’s Day sex all the same. I actually hadn’t been with anyone on this day since, you know. It was oddly therapeutic.”

Jason laughed again and leaned against the door frame, his shirt buttoned and tucked in, more or less ready for him to walk out the door. “I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow, then.”

“Oh God, we have the Palmer pitch tomorrow morning, don’t we?” she groaned, dropping her face into her hands. “I still have so much work to do. I completely forgot.”

“I’d offer to stay and help, but–”

A pillow to the face cut Jason off. “Go _away_ , please. I’m tired of looking at your face.”

“I’m going,” Jason said, a smile on his face. He didn’t move to leave quite yet, though. There was one more thing he needed to say before he left. “I love you, Annabeth.”

_That_ confession didn’t catch Annabeth surprise and it would never be a mistake to speak those words. Jason had no doubt she already knew he loved her, even if it wasn’t the kind of love they’d both hoped it might be. They had made a very big, very naked mistake, but their love for each other would carry them through any residual awkwardness – unless Leo somehow found out, then Jason would have to face death, instead.

Nodding, and becoming a little misty eyed, Annabeth replied, “I love you, too, Jason.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next update coming march 17th! 👀🍀🍻


End file.
